422 THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. ..... [1709-1742. who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. . . . . . The character of Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but in beauty." The guardian-sylph has hovered over Belinda in her morning-dream; and he has whispered in her ear words which are not complimentary to the modesty or sense of women; but they are meant as compliments. Belinda is waked by her lap-dog, and her "eyes first opened on a billet-doux." The toilet is completed with the aid of "Betty" and the sylphs. "Awful beauty puts on all its charms." In the company of "fair nymphs and well-dressed youths" Belinda is launched on the silver Thames. Ariel and his attendant sprites sit on the sails of "the painted vessel." Their province is to tend the fair; to guard their powder, their essences, and their washes; even in dreams to bestow invention "To change a flounce, or add a furbelow." The gay company repair to Hampton Court: "In various talk th' instructive hours they pass'd, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that." The game of ombre succeeds; and then comes coffee. The tempting lock is cut off Belinda's hair, by an adventurous baron, "As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head." She shrieks, as ladies shriek, When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last.” Rage, resentment, and despair take possession of her soul. The fierce Thalestris "fans the rising fire." Gnomes come from "the cave of spleen" to make her curse the detested day, when the favourite curl was snatched from her head. A wise monitor, the grave Clarissa, counsels forgiveness and a return to good humour; but she counsels in vain. Good sense and good humour are to "preserve what beauty gains," "That men may say, when we the front-box grace, Behold the first in virtue as in face." That men may say! This, then, was the reward of virtue. Duty had no charms of its own: "Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Charm'd the small-pox, or chased old age away; Exquisite poem! Was it originally read as a gentle satire, or a true picture, 1709-1742.] PRUDE AND COQUETTE. 423 of the ladies of the court of Anne? At twenty-four Pope was not a professed satirist. At forty-seven he wrote his "Epistle to a Lady on the Characters of Women," in which, out of his mature experience he said: "Men, some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at heart a rake." False as this may be, no satirist would now dare to make the assertion, because a total change of manners has deprived him of such materials for the exercise of his art. We apprehend that there was no want in Pope's age of single figures and groups to be drawn at full length, as he has drawn his Rufa, and Silia, and Narcissa, and Flavia, and Chloe-exceptions to his general rule, that "Most women have no characters at all." The Essayists have two very marked species of the genus mulier—the coquette and the prude. Steele describes the coquette as "a sect among women of all others the most mischievous." He says, as a rake among men is the man who lives in the constant abuse of his reason, so a coquette among women is one who lives in continual misapplication of her beauty." According to the same authority, "the prude and the coquette, as different as they appear in their behaviour, are in reality the same kind of women. The motive in both is the affectation of pleasing men. They are sisters of the same blood and constitution, only one chooses a grave and the other a light dress. The prude appears more virtuous, the coquette more vicious, than she really is." Addison, in his "Vision of Justice," is scarcely less severe upon the beautiful creatures who come to look into "the mirror of truth." When the real character was shown without regard to the external features, "multitudes started at their own form, and would have broke the glass if they could have reached it. . . I observed that some few were so humble as to be surprised at their own charms." By way of apology, Addison concludes his paper by expressing his belief that his vision had "not done justice to the sex." He attempts, then, to repair "the partiality and extravagance of his vision," not in his own words, or by quotation from a poet of his own age, but in a passage written by one who had formed his notions of woman upon the models of a more heroic time-that which produced Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Fanshawe : "When I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat * "Paradise Lost," book viii. 424 PUPPET PLAYS-THE OPERA. [1709-1742. Addison has supposed that his "imaginary historian," in looking back upon the "Spectator's" representations of the "diversions and characters of the English nation," would " make allowance for the mirth and humour of the author." If his words (he says) were interpreted in their literal meaning, "we must suppose that women of the first quality used to pass whole mornings at a puppet-show;" and "that a promiscuous assembly of men and women were allowed to meet at midnight in masks within the verge of the court." We can scarcely imagine that the antiquity or the wit of the puppetshow attracted "women of the first quality." In Ben Jonson's time the puppet-show had a different name: 99 66 "'Twas a rare motion to be seen in Fleet Street." 66 Pepys saw the "puppet-plays" in Covent Garden; and the same performance was exhibited at Whitehall before Charles II.* In the days of the Spectator," one Powell" placed his show under the piazzas of Covent Garden. The sexton of the adjacent church of St. Paul complains that when he tolls in for week-day prayers, he finds that his congregation take the warning of the bell, morning and evening, to go to the puppet-show. “I have placed my son at the Piazzas, to acquaint the ladies that the bell rings for church, and that it stands on the other side of the garden; but they only laugh at the child." Mrs. Rachel Eyebright has left the church for the puppet-show; and the sexton has lost the fees that gentlemen used to pay to be placed over against" the fair lady. He has now none but a few ordinary people, who come to church only to say their prayers."+ Powell exhibited Whittington and his Cat; and he introduced a pig to dance a minuet with Punch. The town was divided between the attractions of the puppet-show and of the Italian Opera. The wits of the time of Anne tried to laugh down what they treated as an absurdity-" that an audience would sit out an evening to hear a dramatical performance written in a language which they did not understand." In their view it was a monstrous practice. "But what makes it more astonishing, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness which has established it." Addison argues that "if the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment." He bitterly complains that the tragedy of " Phædra and Hippolitus "—a dull mythological affair on the French model-was scarcely heard a third time, amongst a people "so stupidly fond of the Italian Opera." The tragedy-writers strove in vain against the new attraction. Addison thought to supplant it by his opera of "Rosamond;" which poem had no success. It failed; because though the dialogue was intelligible, the music was heavy and spiritless. Gay wrote his "Beggar's Opera " in ridicule of the opera of Fashion. Its object has long since been forgotten. Its popularity mainly rests upon the charming old English airs to which its songs are adapted. The Italian Opera, once planted in England, has survived the assaults of the witty and the prejudices of the vulgar. It is thoroughly acclimated. The * "Diary," Oct. 8, 1662. +"Spectator," No. 14. 1709-1742.] THE MASQUERADE-YOUNG. 425 interchange of taste has made that popular which was once only genteel. It is fortunate that a promiscuous assembly of men and women in masks is now wholly confined to the disreputable portion of society. What the Masquerade was has been told by Addison with such original humour, in that portion of his Essays which is little known, that we may give its leading features without much curtailment.* The Tory Fox-hunter comes to town in the second year of George II., and, having travelled all night, arrives about daybreak at Charing Cross. There, "to his great surprise, he saw a running footman carried in a chair, followed by a waterman, in the same kind of vehicle. He was wondering at the extravagance of their masters, that furnished them with such dresses and accommodations, when on a sudden he beheld a chimney-sweeper, conveyed after the same manner, with three footmen running before him. During his progress through the Strand, he met with several other figures no less wonderful and surprising. Seeing a great many in rich morning gowns, he was amazed to find that persons of quality were up so early; and was no less astonished to see many lawyers in their bar-gowns, when he knew by his almanac that Term was ended." Four heads are popped out of a hackney-coach, and seeing the fox-hunter, " with his long whip, horse-hair periwig, jockey-belt, and coat without sleeves, fancied him to be one of the masqueraders on horseback, and received him with a loud peal of laughter." He concluded "that all the persons he saw in these strange habits were foreigners, and received a great indignation against them, for pretending to laugh at an English country-gentleman. But he soon recovered out of his error, by hearing the voices of several of them, and particularly of a shepherdess quarrelling with her coachman, and threatening to break his bones in very intelligible English, though with a masculine tone. His astonishment still increased upon him, to see a continued procession of harlequins, scaramouches, punchinellos, and a thousand other merry dresses, by which people of quality distinguished their wit from that of the vulgar." The worthy squire having observed half-a-dozen nuns, "who filed off one after another up Katherine-street to their respective convents in Drury-lane," asks a porter what religion these people were of. "The porter replied, "They are of no religion; 'tis a masquerade.' Upon that, says my friend, I began to smoke that they were a parcel of mummers; and being himself one of the quorum in his own county, could not but wonder that none of the Middlesex Justices took care to lay some of them by the heels." A drunken bishop gives dire offence to his spirit of magistracy. "But his worship, in the midst of his austerity, was mollified at the sight of a very lovely milkmaid, whom he began to regard with an eye of mercy, and conceived a particular affection for her, till he found, to his great amazement, that the standers-by suspected her to be a duchess." Young, whose genius as a satirist was munificently rewarded in his own day, scarcely attracts notice in our time, whilst Pope will never be obsolete. Young was not so finished an artist, but he had looked carefully upon the world around him, and in the last years of George I., when he wrote his "Universal Passion," he looked laughingly upon life-a mood very different from that in which the author of the "Night Thoughts" presents himself-perhaps a * "Freeholder," No. 44. 426 FASHIONABLE VICES-DRINKING. [1709-1742. more natural mood. We may follow up the notice by the Essayists of the Puppet-show and the Masquerade, by some lines of Young, which describe what women were at a time when the cultivation of their own minds, the education of their children, the attainment of what we call accomplishments, were not the employment of the higher class of ladies,-certainly not of those who belonged to the middle ranks : "Britannia's daughters, much more fair than nice, Too fond of admiration, lose their price; The gentle satire of the essayists against coquettes and prudes might have made affectation less conspicuous. Their laugh against female follies in dress might have somewhat abated the rage for patches, or somewhat diminished the rotundity of the petticoat. Fine ladies might have abstained from the masquerade till it was purified from low company. Persons of quality might have been more careful of the sharper with a pack of cards in his pocket, after Steele's denunciation of the tribe. Ladies at the Bath might have been a little more decorous, when their "ease of conscience" was inferred from the circumstance "that they go directly from church to the gaming-table; and so highly reverence play, as to make it a great part of their exercise on Sundays." Flagrant vices were not likely to yield quickly to a mild censorship. Drunkenness is one of the objects of their reprehension : "A method of spending one's time agreeably is a thing so little studied, that the common amusement of our young gentlemen, especially of such as are at a distance from those of the first breeding, is drinking." Yet we have abundant evidence that "those of the first breeding" were often the most intemperate. The moralists were not exempt from the common vice of our young gentlemen. Hear Swift: "I dined with Mr. Addison and Dick Stuart, lord Mountjoy's brother, a treat of Addison's. They were half fuddled, but not I; for I mixed water with my wine, and left them together between nine and ten." An early hour to leave gentlemen half fuddled, according to our modern computation. "In my own memory," writes Steele, "the dinner has crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to three; and where it will fix nobody knows."§ After the wine came the cards. "I dined with lord Montrath, and carried lord Mountjoy and sir Andrew Fountaine with me; and was looking over them at ombre till eleven this evening, like a fool." || The moralists, whether in earnest or not, began to complain, as our own * "Love of Fame, the Universal Passion," Satire V. + "Guardian," No. 174. § "Tatler," No. 263. "Journal to Stella," Oct. 31, 1710. |