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Page 34
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE STRANGE AND YET NATURAL ESCAPE OF OUR HERO.
Our hero, having with wonderful resolution thrown himself into the
sea, as we mentioned at the end of the last chapter, was
miraculously within two minutes after replaced in his boat; and
this without the assistance of a dolphin or a seahorse, or any
other fish or animal, who are always as ready at hand when a poet
or historian pleases to call for them to carry a hero through the
sea, as any chairman at a coffee-house door near St. James's to
convey a beau over a street, and preserve his white stockings. The
truth is, we do not chuse to have any recourse to miracles, from
the strict observance we pay to that rule of Horace,
Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus.
The meaning of which is, do not bring in a supernatural agent when
you can do without him; and indeed we are much deeper read in
natural than supernatural causes. We will therefore endeavour to
account for this extraordinary event from the former of these; and
in doing this it will be necessary to disclose some profound
secrets to our reader, extremely well worth his knowing, and which
may serve him to account for many occurrences of the phenomenous
kind which have formerly appeared in this our hemisphere.
Be it known then that the great Alma Mater, Nature, is of all
other females the most obstinate, and tenacious of her purpose. So
true is that observation,
Naturam expellas furca licet, usque recurret.
Which I need not render in English, it being to be found in a book
which most fine gentlemen are forced to read. Whatever Nature,
therefore, purposes to herself, she never suffers any reason,
design, or accident to frustrate. Now, though it may seem to a
shallow observer that some persons were designed by Nature for no
use or purpose whatever, yet certain it is that no man is born
into the world without his particular allotment; viz., some to be
kings, some statesmen, some ambassadors, some bishops, some
generals, and so on. Of these there be two kinds; those to whom
Nature is so generous to give some endowment qualifying them for
the parts she intends them afterwards to act on this stage, and
those whom she uses as instances of her unlimited power, and for
whose preferment to such and such stations Solomon himself could
have invented no other reason than that Nature designed them so.
These latter some great philosophers have, to shew them to be the
favourites of Nature, distinguished by the honourable appellation
of NATURALS. Indeed, the true reason of the general ignorance of
mankind on this head seems to be this; that, as Nature chuses to
execute these her purposes by certain second causes, and as many
of these second causes seem so totally foreign to her design, the
wit of man, which, like his eye, sees best directly forward, and
very little and imperfectly what is oblique, is not able to
discern the end by the means. Thus, how a handsome wife or
daughter should contribute to execute her original designation of
a general, or how flattery or half a dozen houses in a borough-
town should denote a judge, or a bishop, he is not capable of
comprehending. And, indeed, we ourselves, wise as we are, are
forced to reason ab effectu; and if we had been asked what Nature
had intended such men for, before she herself had by the event
demonstrated her purpose, it is possible we might sometimes have
been puzzled to declare; for it must be confessed that at first
sight, and to a mind uninspired, a man of vast natural capacity
and much acquired knowledge may seem by Nature designed for power
and honour, rather than one remarkable only for the want of these,
and indeed all other qualifications; whereas daily experience
convinces us of the contrary, and drives us as it were into the
opinion I have here disclosed.
Now, Nature having originally intended our great man for that
final exaltation which, as it is the most proper and becoming end
of all great men, it were heartily to be wished they might all
arrive at, would by no means be diverted from her purpose. She
therefore no sooner spied him in the water than she softly
whispered in his ear to attempt the recovery of his boat, which
call he immediately obeyed, and, being a good swimmer, and it
being a perfect calm, with great facility accomplished it.
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