An Excerpt from Joseph Addison’s Spectator #94

The first English language newssheets appeared in the early years of the 17^th century.  Nathaniel Butter’s Corant or Weekly Newes, from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Polonia has left sufficient traces that it is the best known.  From the sheet of September 11, 1621, we learn:

FRom Constantinople it is written, that there is both a great plague and dearth in that City, that in the black Sea, the Turkes Gallies had taken 6. Ships with Cossockers, and made them all slaues, among them one was a Turke, that hath reuealed many secrets touching the Polish Army.

Following the Revolution of 1688, the sheets became highly popular.  They were read out from the breakfast tables and the kidneys of the coffee houses that were the center of social life.

Many of the papers were established to support the Whig or Tory parties which were fiercely partisan.  The first sheet to issue on a regular schedule was The Daily Courant in 1702.  The Courant was not expressly political.  It served London with foreign news on the front of its single sheet and paid advertisements on the back.

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Tatler and Spectator papers were a  brilliant addition to the daily sheet.  They developed into prototypical society pages.

Addison, in particular, was a full-blown literary man in many ways ahead of his times.  He was the major contributor to The Spectator, and, at the pace of one sheet daily, turned it into one of the finest and most progressive works in the language.

The following Excerpt from Joseph Addison’s Spectator #94, Monday, June 18, 1711, is a charming story that will seem, to those who are familiar with the writing of the 18^th century, unexpected for pure imagination.  It could easily have been written by our dear master, Jorge Luis Borges.  Mention of Islam with only a single passing (obligatory) deprecation shows a cosmopolitan attitude beyond what the reputation of the times might support.

There is a famous passage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet had been possessed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is there said, that the angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of; and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this, says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away, before the water was all spilt.

There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which relates to this passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the subject we are now upon. A Sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impossible and absurd: but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he would desire of him. Upon this the sultan was directed to place himself by a huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy man bid him plunge his head into the water, and draw it up again. The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. The king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this pièce of treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself to some people whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where after some adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long, that he had by her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a design to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he said his prayers.

After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head above the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side. He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and a delusion; that he had not stirred from the place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it out again.

The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan, that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if he pleases, make a single day, nay, a single moment, appear to any of his creatures as a thousand years.

I shall leave my reader to  compare these eastern fables with the notions of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves diligently to the pursuits of knowledge.

Also from the Library of Babel:

• The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia.  July, 14, 2019.  “For the next month, then, I put aside a few hours each night.  Not only with Singleton and Merwin.  In the glorious Age of the Internet, the first step could only be a search for what books relating to the subject were available on Google Book Search and the Internet Archive.”
• A Memoriam for W. S. Merwin.  April 17, 2019.  “It took about three days, as I recall, for me to surrender to the fact that W. S. Merwin was the finest English language poet of his time.  I wished I’d been prepared to read him years ago.”
• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

Also from Virtual Grub Street:

• The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576.  June 10, 2019.  “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot.  The citizens were prepared to give them a fight.  Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’