The Tatler (Vol 4). Addison Joseph

       No. 214. [Steele. 56

      From Saturday, Aug. 19, to Tuesday, Aug. 22, 1710

      – Soles et aperta serena

      Prospicere, et certis poteris cognoscere signis.

      In every party there are two sorts of men, the rigid and the supple. The rigid are an intractable race of mortals, who act upon principle, and will not, forsooth, fall into any measures that are not consistent with their received notions of honour. These are persons of a stubborn, unpliant morality, that sullenly adhere to their friends when they are disgraced, and to their principles, though they are exploded. I shall therefore give up this stiff-necked generation to their own obstinacy, and turn my thoughts to the advantage of the supple, who pay their homage to places, and not persons; and without enslaving themselves to any particular scheme of opinions, are as ready to change their conduct in point of sentiment as of fashion. The well-disciplined part of a court are generally so perfect at their exercise, that you may see a whole assembly, from front to rear, face about at once to a new man of power, though at the same time they turn their backs upon him that brought them thither. The great hardship these complaisant members of society are under, seems to be the want of warning upon any approaching change or revolution; so that they are obliged in a hurry to tack about with every wind, and stop short in the midst of a full career, to the great surprise and derision of their beholders.

      When a man foresees a decaying ministry, he has leisure to grow a malcontent, reflect upon the present conduct, and by gradual murmurs fall off from his friends into a new party, by just steps and measures. For want of such notices, I have formerly known a very well-bred person refuse to return a bow of a man whom he thought in disgrace, that was next day made Secretary of State; and another, who after a long neglect of a minister, came to his levee, and made professions of zeal for his service the very day before he was turned out.

      This produces also unavoidable confusions and mistakes in the descriptions of great men's parts and merits. That ancient lyric, Mr. D'Urfey,57 some years ago wrote a dedication to a certain lord, in which he celebrated him for the greatest poet and critic of that age, upon a misinformation in Dyer's Letter58, that his noble patron was made Lord Chamberlain. In short, innumerable votes, speeches, and sermons have been thrown away, and turned to no account, merely for want of due and timely intelligence. Nay, it has been known, that a panegyric has been half printed off, when the poet, upon the removal of the minister, has been forced to alter it into a satire.

      For the conduct therefore of such useful persons as are ready to do their country service upon all occasions, I have an engine in my study, which is a sort of a Political Barometer, or, to speak more intelligibly, a State Weather-Glass, that, by the rising and falling of a certain magical liquor, presages all changes and revolutions in government, as the common glass does those of the weather. This weather-glass is said to have been invented by Cardan,59 and given by him as a present to his great countryman and contemporary Machiavel, which (by the way) may serve to rectify a received error in chronology, that places one of these some years after the other. How or when it came into my hands, I shall desire to be excused if I keep to myself; but so it is, that I have walked by it for the better part of a century, to my safety at least, if not to my advantage; and have among my papers, a register of all the changes that happened in it from the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign.