Satyr upon the departed Persons; who had left no other Memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several Persons mentioned in the Battels of Heroic Poems, who have sounding Names given them, for no other Reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.

Γλαυκόν τε Μέδοντα τε Θερσίλοχόν τε.1
-HOMER.

Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.
-VIRGIL.

The Life of these Men is finely described. in Holy Writ by the Path of an Arrow, which is immediately closed up and lost.

Upon my going into the Church, I entertained my self with the digging of a Grave; and saw in every Shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the Fragment of a Bone or Skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering Earth that some time or other had a place in the Composition of an human Body. Upon this, I began to consider with my self what innumerable Multitudes of People lay confused. together under the Pavement of that ancient Cathedral; how Men and Women, Friends and Enemies, Priests and Soldiers, Monks and Prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common Mass; how Beauty, Strength, and Youth, with Old-age, Weakness, and Deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous Heap of Matter.

After having thus surveyed this great Magazine of Mortality, as it were, in the Lump, I examined it more particularly by the Accounts which I found on several of the Monuments which are raised in every Quarter of that ancient Fabrick. Some of them were covered with such extravagant Epitaphs, that, if it were possible for the dead Person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the Praises which his Friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the Character of the Person departed in

1"Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus."

Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a Twelve-month. In the Poetical Quarter, I found there were Poets who had no Monuments, and Monuments which had no Poets. I observed indeed that the present War had filled the Church with many of these uninhabited Monuments, which had been erected to the Memory of Persons whose Bodies were perhaps buried in the Plains of Blenheim, or in the Bosom of the Ocean.

I could not but be very much delighted with several modern Epitaphs, which are written with great Elegance of Expression and Justness of Thought, and therefore do Honor to the Living as well as to the Dead. As a Foreigner is very apt to conceive an Idea of the Ignorance or Politeness of a Nation from the Turn of their public Monuments and Inscriptions, they should be submitted to the Perusal of Men of Learning and Genius before they are put in Execution. Sir Cloudesley Shovel's Monument has very often given me great Offence: Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing Character of that plain gallant Man, he is represented on his Tomb by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy of State. The Inscription is answerable to the Monument; for instead of celebrating the many remarkable Actions he had performed in the Service of his Country, it acquaints us only with the Manner of his Death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any Honor. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of Genius, shew an infinitely greater Taste of Antiquity and Politeness in their Buildings and Works of this Nature, than what we meet with in those of our own Country. The Monuments of their Admirals, which have been erected at the public. Expense, represent them like themselves; and are adorned with rostral Crowns and naval Ornaments, with beautiful Festoons of Sea-weed, Shells, and Coral. But to return to

our Subject. I

have left the Repository of our English Kings for the Contemplation of another Day, when I shall find my Mind disposed for so serious an Amusement. I know that Entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal Thoughts in timorous Minds, and gloomy Imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a View of Nature in her deep and solemn Scenes, with the same Pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve my self with those Objects, which others consider with Terror. When I look upon the Tombs of the Great, every Emotion of Envy dies in me; when I read the Epitaphs of the Beautiful, every inordinate Desire goes

out; when I meet with the Grief of Parents upon a Tomb-stone, my Heart melts with Compassion; when I see the Tomb of the Parents themselves, I consider the Vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival Wits placed Side by Side, or the holy Men that divided the World with their Contests and Disputes, I reflect with Sorrow and Astonishment on the little Competitions, Factions, and Debates of Mankind. When I read the several Dates of the Tombs, of some that died Yesterday, and some six hundred Years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be Contemporaries, and make our Appearance together.

Linguæ centum sunt, oraque centum, Ferrea vox.1-VIRGIL.

THERE is nothing which more astonishes a Foreigner, and frights a Country Squire, than the Cries of London. My good Friend Sir Roger often declares, that he cannot get them out of his Head, or go to sleep for them the first Week that he is in Town. On the contrary, Will Honeycomb calls them the Ramage de la Ville, and prefers them to the Sounds of Larks and Nightingales, with all the Musick of the Fields and Woods. I have lately received a Letter from some very odd Fellow upon this Subject, which I shall leave with my Reader, without saying any thing further of it.

SIR,

I am a Man out of all Business, and would willingly turn my Head to any thing for an honest Livelihood. I have invented several Projects for raising

"There are a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and a voice of iron." 2"Warblings of the town."

many Millions of Money without burdening the Subject, but I cannot get the Parliament to listen to me, who look upon me, forsooth, as a Projector; so that despairing to enrich either my self or my Country by this Publick-spiritedness, I would make some Proposals to you relating to a Design which I have very much at Heart, and which may procure me an handsome Subsistance, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the Cities of London and Westminster.

The Post I would aim at is to be Comptroller general of the London Cries, which are at present under no manner of Rules or Discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this Place, as being a Man of very strong Lungs, of great Insight into all the Branches of our British Trades and Manufactures, and of a competent Skill in Musick.

The Cries of London may be divided into Vocal and Instrumental. As for the latter, they are at present under a very great Disorder. A Freeman of London has the Privilege of disturbing a whole Street for an Hour together, with the Twancking of a brass Kettle or a

Frying-pan. The Watch-man's Thump at Midnight startles us in our Beds, as much as the breaking in of a Thief. The Sow-gelder's Horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the Liberties. I would therefore propose, that no Instrument of this Nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the Ears of her Majesty's liege Subjects.

The

Vocal Cries are of a much larger Extent, and indeed so full of Incongruities and Barbarisms, that we appear a distracted City to Foreigners, who do not comprehend the Meaning of such enormous Outcries. Milk is generally sold in a Note above Elah,1 and in Sounds so exceeding Shrill, that it often sets our Teeth on edge. The Chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain Pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest Base, and sometimes in the sharpest Treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest Note of the Gamut. same Observation might be made on the Retailers of Small-coal, not to mention. broken Glasses or Brick-dust. In these, therefore, and the like Cases, it should be my Care to sweeten and mellow the Voices of these itinerant Tradesmen, before they make their Appearance in our Streets; as also to accommodate their Cries to their respective Wares; and to take Care in particular that those may not make the most Noise, who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the Venders of Card-matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old Proverb of 'Much Cry but little Wool.'

Some of these last-mentioned Musicians are so very loud in the Sale of these trifling Manufactures, that an honest splenetick Gentleman of my Acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the Street where he lived: But what was the Effect of this Contract? why, the whole Tribe of Cardmatch-makers which frequent that Quarter, passed by his Door the very next Ela, the highest note in the gamut.

Day,, in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

It is another great Imperfection in our London Cries, that there is no just Time nor Measure observed in them. Our News should indeed be published in a very quick Time, because it is a Commodity that will not keep cold. It should not however be cried with the same Precipitation as Fire: Yet this is generally the Case: A bloody battel alarms the Town from one End to another in an Instant. Every Motion of the French is published in so great an Hurry, that one would think the Enemy. were at our Gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some Distinction made between the spreading of a Victory, a March, or an Incampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish Mail. Nor must I omit under this Head, those excessive Alarms with which several boisterous Rusticks infest our Streets in Turnip Season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are Wares which are in no Danger of Cooling upon their Hands.

There are others who affect a very slow Time, and are in my Opinion much more tuneable than the former; the Cooper in particular swells his last note in an hollow Voice that is not without its Harmony; nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable Melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn Air with which the Publick is very often asked, if they have any Chairs to mend. Your own Memory may_suggest to you many other lamentable Ditties of the same Nature, in which the Musick is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

I am always pleased with that particujar Time of the Year which is proper for the pickling of Dill and Cucumbers; but alas this Cry, like the Song of the Nightingales, is not heard above two months. It would therefore be worth while to consider whether the same Air might not in some Cases be adapted to other Words.

It might likewise deserve our most serious Consideration, how far, in a wellregulated City, those Humorists are to be tolerated, who not contented with the traditional Cries of their Fore-fathers, have invented particular Songs and Tunes of their own: Such as was, not many Years since, the Pastry-man, coramonly known by the Name of the CollyMolly-Puff; and such as is at this Day the Vender of Powder and Washballs, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the Name of Powder-Watt.

I must not here omit one particular Absurdity which runs thro' this whole vociferous Generation, and which renders their Cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the Publick. I mean that idle Accomplishment which they all of them aim at, of Crying so as not to be understood. Whether or no they have learned this from several of our affected Singers, I will not take upon me to say; but most certain it is, that People know the Wares they deal in rather by their Tunes than by their Words; insomuch that I have sometimes seen a Country Boy run out to buy Apples of a Bellows-mender, and Ginger-bread from a Grinder of Knives

and Scissars. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some very eminent Artists of this particular Grace in a Cry, that none but their Acquaintance are able to guess at their Profession; for who else can know, that "Work if I had it," should be the Signification of a CornCutter?

Forasmuch therefore as Persons of this Rank are seldom Men of Genius or Capacity, I think it would be very proper that some Man of good Sense and sound judgment should preside over these publick Cries, who should permit none to lift up their Voices in our Streets, that have not tuneable Throats, and are not only able to overcome the Noise of the Croud, and the rattling of Coaches, but also to vend their respective Merchandizes in apt Phrases, and in the most distinct and agreeable Sounds. I do therefore humbly recommend my self as a Person rightly qualified for this Post, and if I meet with fitting Encouragement, shall communicate some other Projects which I have by me, that may no less conduce to the Emolument of the Publick. I am,

Sir, &c.
RALPH CROTCHETT.

the student often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front in public life, or accustomed his passions to the vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert, before hardy contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a silkworm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar mountains.

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the means of communicating to the public the theory of a garret; a subject which, except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto neglected by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure to prosecute the various researches in which a nice discussion must engage them, or because it requires such diversity of knowledge, and such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in any single intellect: or perhaps others foresaw the tumults which would be raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance.

That the professors of literature generally reside in the highest stories, has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated situation: why else were the Muses stationed on Olympus or Parnassus by those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove himself nursed upon a mountain?

Or why did the goddess, when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great masters of the earlier ages endeavored to inculcate to posterity the importance of a garret, which, though they had been long obscured by the negligence and ignorance of succeeding times, were well enforced by the celebrated symbol of Pythagoras, avev πνεόντων τὴν ἠχὼ προσκύνει;—when the wind blows, worship its echo.' This could not but be understood by his disciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo of the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept:

Quam juvat immites ventos audire cuban

tem

Aut, gelidas hybernus aquas cum fuderit

auster,

Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!

How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs!

And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of Lucretius, an earlier writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty towers of serene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise man looks down upon the confused and erratic state of the world moving below him:

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena; Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare, atque viam palantis quærere vita. 'Tis sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,

And all the magazines of learning fortified: From thence to look below on human kind, Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind. -DRYDEN.

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet, but this, like many ancient cus