motions, and postures of familiar life and mechanical employments. He would sometimes lay wagers with his friends, that he would guess, upon the Pont Neuf, what trade persons were of that passed by, from their walk and air.
CHARACTERS DESCRIBED BY MUSICAL NOTES.
The idea of describing characters under the names of Musical Instruments has been already displayed in two most pleasing papers which embellish the Tatler, written by Addison. He dwells on this idea with uncommon success. It has been applauded for its originality; and in the general preface to that work, those papers are distinguished for their felicity of imagination. The following paper was published in the year 1700, in a volume of "Philosophical Transactions and Collections," and the two numbers of Addison in the year 1710. It is probable that this inimitable writer borrowed the seminal hint from this work:—
"A conjecture at dispositions from the modulations of the voice.
"Sitting in some company, and having been but a little before musical, I chanced to take notice that, in ordinary discourse, words were spoken in perfect notes; and that some of the company used eighths, some fifths, some thirds; and that his discourse which was the most pleasing, his words, as to their tone, consisted most of concords, and were of discords of such as made up harmony. The same person was the most affable, pleasant, and best-natured in the company. This suggests a reason why many discourses which one hears with much pleasure, when they come to be read scarcely seem the same things.
"From this difference of Music in Speech, we may conjecture that of Tempers. We know the Doric mood sounds gravity and sobriety; the Lydian, buxomness and freedom; the Æolic, sweet stillness and quiet composure; the Phrygian, jollity and youthful levity; the Ionic is a stiller of storms and disturbances arising from passion; and why may we not reasonably suppose, that those whose speech naturally runs into the notes peculiar to any of these moods, are likewise in nature hereunto congenerous? C Fa ut may show me to be of an ordinary capacity, though good disposition. G Sol re ut, to be peevish and effeminate. Flats, a manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which will in some measure agree with all cliffs, to be of good parts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an inconstant nature. Likewise from the Times: so semi-briefs may speak a temper dull and phlegmatic; minims, grave and serious; crotchets, a prompt wit; quavers, vehemency of passion, and scolds use them. Semi-brief-rest may denote one either stupid or fuller of thoughts than he can utter; minimrest, one that deliberates; crotchet-rest, one in a passion. So that from the natural use of Mood, Note, and Time, we may collect Dispositions."
MILTON.
It is painful to observe the acrimony which the most eminent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings. The politeness of the present times has in some degree softened the malignity of the man, in the dignity of the author; but this is by no means an irrevocable law.
It is said not to be honourable to literature to revive such controversies; and a work entitled "Querelles Littéraires," when it first appeared, excited loud murmurs; but it has its moral: like showing the drunkard to a youth, that he may turn aside disgusted with ebriety. Must we suppose that men of letters are exempt from the human passions? Their sensibility, on the contrary, is more irritable than that of others. To observe the ridiculous attitudes in which great men appear, when they employ the style of the fish-market, may be one great means of restraining that ferocious pride often breaking out in the republic of letters. Johnson at least appears to have entertained the same opinion; for he thought proper to republish the low invective of Dryden against Settle; and since I have published my "Quarrels of Authors," it becomes me to say no more.
The celebrated controversy of Salmasius, continued by Morus with Milton—the first the pleader of King Charles, the latter the advocate of the people—was of that magnitude, that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly massacred Salmasius, is now read but by the few. Whatever is addressed to the times, however great may be its merits, is doomed to perish with the times; yet on these pages the philosopher will not contemplate in vain.
It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the rhetorical weeds, for flowers we cannot well call them, with which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their erudition—the two most learned antagonists of a learned age!
Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work Defensio Regia, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a laugh:—"Englishmen! who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-balls; who play with crowns as if they were bowls; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks."
That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge; but surely it is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the rectitude of the intellect; yet Milbourne and Dennis, the last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that comparing Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from with displeasure, was very good argument to lower their literary abilities. Salmasius seems also to have entertained this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong information; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own distempered imagination.
Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys: and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the words of Virgil, "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says, lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches mediocrity than, the diminutive; that he still felt the same courage and the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword, he felt no difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently creditable to him: for though he had passed his fortieth year, he was in all other respects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds, "that even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their appearance; in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I am a deceiver!"
Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his Regii Sanguinis Clamor, compares Milton to a hangman; his disordered vision to the blindness of his soul, and so vomits forth his venom.
When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of Milton were false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncommonly beautiful, he then turned his battery against those graces with which Nature had so liberally adorned his adversary: and it is now that he seems to have laid no restrictions on his pen; but, raging with the irritation of Milton's success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most infamous aspersions.
It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to answer Salmasius, he had lost the use of one of his eyes; and his physicians declared that, if he applied himself to the controversy, the other would likewise close for ever! His patriotism was not to be baffled,
