AKENSIDE TO MR. DAVID FORDYCE, At Aberdeen, N. Britain. Newcastle, 18th June, 1742. DEAR SIR-I should have answered your letter sooner, but that I was uncertain, till of late, whether to direct for you at Edinburgh or at Aberdeen. I durst not, however, reply in the language you wrote in; for, though I could perhaps have filled two or three pages with Italian words ranged in grammatical order, yet, without assuming the natural air and spirit of the language, you would no more think I had wrote Italian than you would call that a musical composition which was only a number of concords put together without any regard to the rhythm or style of the whole. This reason was stronger in writing to you, who have attained so perfectly the wild elegance, the vaghezza, which the Italians are so fond of both in language and painting, and in which, I believe, they exceed all the moderns. What is good in the French authors is of a more sober, classical manner, and greater severity of design. The Spaniards, I imagine, approach much nearer to the Italian manner. Our English poetry has but little of it, and that chiefly among the older compositions of our countrymen-the juvenilia of Milton, and the fairy scenes of Spenser and Shakespeare. Our nervous and concise language 'does not willingly flow into this fanciful luxuriance; besides that the genius of our poetry delights in a vehemence of passion and philosophical sublimity of sentiments much above its reach. Since we parted, I have been chiefly employed in reading the Greek philosophers, especially the Stoics. Upton's edition of Arrian was published just as I got hither: it is in two small quarto volumes, neat enough; the second consists principally of the editor's comments and notes variorum. He has got a great many remarks of Lord Shaftesbury, but they are entirely critical, and contain very ingenious conjectures on the reading of several passages. I have had great pleasure from the writers of this sect; but, though I admire the strength and elevation of their moral, yet, in modern life especially, I am afraid it would lead to something splenetic and unconversable. Besides, it allows too little to domestic virtue and tenderness, it dwells too much on the awful and sublime of life; yet even its sublimity resembles that of a vast open prospect in winter, when the sun scarce can shine through the atmosphere, and looks on the rigour of the season with a kind of sullen majesty; to the generality of mankind, a much narrower landscape in the sunshine of a spring morning would be much more agreeable. I would therefore mix the Stoic with the Platonic philosophy; they would equally temper and adorn each other; for, if mere stoicism be in hazard of growing surly and unsocial, it is no less certain that Platonic enthusiasm has always run to extra. vagance, but where it was kept steady by a severe judgment; besides that the constant pursuit of beauty and elegance is apt to fill the mind with high and florid desires, than which nothing is more dangerous to that internal freedom which is the basis of virtue. In short, the case seems much the same here as with the human sexes, either of which is liable to these very imperfections when apart, and therefore the perfection of human life is best found in their union. Were I a painter, and going to represent these two sects in an emblematic way, I would draw the genius of the Stoics like a man in his prime, or rather of a green and active old age, with a manly sternness and simplicity in his air and habit, seated on a rock overlooking the sea in a tempest of wind and lightning, and regarding the noise of the thunder and the rolling of the waves with a serene defiance. But the Platonic genius I would represent like another Muse-a virgin of a sweet and lively beauty, with wings to her head, and a loose robe of a bright azure colour. She should be seated in a garden, on the brink of a clear and smooth canal, while the sky were without a cloud, and the sun shining in the zenith. Our theological lady, conscious that her eyes could not endure the splendour of his immediate appearance, should be fixed in contemplating his milder image reflected from the water. But enough of this. I thank you for your account of the manner in which you dispose of your personages; I am only afraid you will scarce find room for the full exercise of Philander's genius and virtue in the station you have assigned him, for the statutes of a college are too well known and too strictly observed to leave a probability of much improvement under any particular president or master. The rest, I think, are very well settled. You might find occasion, in the characters of Atticus and Sophron, to give a little good advice on the ancient and present state of our political constitution. We have little news. I saw yesterday proposals by an Oxford man to publish an edition of Polybius. I am quite sick of politics-our present politics I mean. Within this last month or six weeks I have seen Richardson, Pickering, and Frank Hume, who all remembered you with affection; the two former were for Paris, the last for Flanders with the regiment to which he is surgeon. I had a letter last post from Russell; he has been ill of a quinsy, but is much better: all other friends are well. Roebuck is at Leyden, and takes his degree there this summer, as Allen has already done at St. Andrew's. Ogle died about a month after we left you. I am, with great esteem and affectionate remembrance of the pleasures of our late conversations, Dear Sir, your most faithful and obedient servant, (Direct be left at Mr. Akinside's, Surgeon in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.) MARK AKINSIDE. AKENSIDE TO MR. DAVID FORDYCE, At Mr. Gavin Hamilton's, Bookseller in Edinburgh. Newcastle, 30th July, 1748. DEAR SIR,-With respect to Shaftesbury's Test of Truth, I apprehend the matter thus:—Ridicule is never conversant about bare abstract speculative truth-about the agreement or disagreement of ideas which merely inform the understanding without affecting the temper and imagination. It always supposes the perception of some quality or object either venerable, fair, praiseworthy, or mean, sordid and ignoble. The essence of the Tо yeλotov consists in the unnatural combination of these in one appearance; and hence you will observe the origin of that difference which is made between true ridicule and false; for I, by a wrong imagination, may apprehend that to be sordid and ignoble which really is not; I may also apprehend it inconsistent with the other appearances of reverence or beauty, when they are in fact perfectly coincident. Take an instance of each. I remember to have heard you condemn the late comic romance of Joseph Andrews, for representing Joseph's temperance against the offers of his lady in a ridiculous light; your sentence was perfectly just, for it is custom, corrupted custom, and not nature, which teaches us to annex ideas of contempt to such an abstinence; for by vicious conversations and writings the world is deceived, to think it incongruous, inconsistent with the character and situation of a man, and therefore ridiculous. An instance of the second kind may be this: suppose a gentleman nobly drest, a person of a public character, perhaps in the robes of his office, walking in a foul street, without any conceited airs or self-applause from his splendid appearance; suppose, by an accident or fall, his garment quite stained and defaced, -the opposition between the splendour of one part of his dress, and the foul appearance of the other, might perhaps excite the sense of ridicule in a light, superficial mind; but, to a man of taste and penetration, the ridicule would immediately vanish, because, as our gentleman's mind was not fondly prepossessed with any conceit of worth or considerable splendour in his habit, so neither will the change produced in it give him any sensation of real disgrao or shame; consequently, in his mind there is no incongruity produced by this external circumstance, therefore nothing ridiculous in the man in sentiment, in life: now take away all ideas of this intellectual and feeling species, and then try whether ridicule can have any place in an obiect; you will find, I believe, none at all. But alter the example a little, and suppose the person so begrimed to have been a fop, whose whole appearance and gesture showed how much he valued himself on his finery, there the ridicule would [be] irresistible and just, because the incongruity is real. Now. as to the test of our divine Master. This sense of ridicule was certainly given us for good endsin a word, for the same sort of end as the sense of beauty and veracity and gratitude; to supply the slow deductions of our reason, and lead us to avoid and depress at first sight some certain circumstances of the mind which are really prejudicial to life, but would otherwise have required a longer investigation to discover them to be so than we are usually at leisure for. If, therefore, by any unfairness in an argument, certain circumstances relating to a point in question be concealed, to apply the ridicule is to drag out those cir cumstances, and set them (if they be opposite) in the fullest light of opposition to those others which are owned and pleaded for, and thus render the claim incongruous and ridiculous. Is there any great mystery or danger in this? and is not Mr. Warburton-are not all the priests in Christendom—at full liberty to inquire whether these circumstances which I represent as opposite and incongruous, be really so; and whether they are any way connected with the claim? If they be not, my procedure is certainly itself ri ticulous, as connecting in my own mind the idea of the To yeλolov with what s no way related to it, and very inconsistent with it. I have not yet fixed either the day of my departure or my route, being detained by some accidents longer than I expected, only I am pretty sure, I shall set forward in the second week of August. If you could be at leisure to send me two or three letters enclosed in one to myself, the carrier who sets out every Thursday from Bristow Port would bring them safe enough, espe cially if you tell him I will give him sixpence or a shilling for his trouble. You or Russell might send them to his lodging by a cadie: you see my impudence, but you taught me it by your too great complaisance. There is another carrier, who sets out from the head of the Cow-gate; so that if one should not be in the way, you will find the other. I was half angry in mirth, that you should so misapprehend me about my difficulty in writing to Philostratus; I thought the word self-control would have given you a different idea of the matter than a diffidence and terror of appearing under so formidable an eye. I assure you, Sir, I wrote a very simple letter, without correction, without brilliancy, without literature. I wrote to Cleghorn last night, to make him laugh, to puzzle and astonish him in this combination of woes. As I make no doubt but he would think me distracted, you may be so good as tell him that you have received a letter, wrote the next morning, in which, after passing an easy night, with nine hours' sleep, there appear some pretty favourable symptoms of a return to my senses. I want letters from him and , and Russell and Blair, immediately; for I have waited too long for them. Farewell: I shall write from London. Commend me to all ours. I am, dear Fordyce, your affectionate friend and obedient servant, M. A |