Hesiod, in his celebrated distribution of mankind, divides them into three orders of intellect. “The first place,” says he, “belongs to him that can by his own powers discern what is right and fit, and penetrate to the remoter motives of action. The second is claimed by him that is willing to hear instruction, and can perceive right and wrong when they are shewn him by another; but he that has neither acuteness nor docility, who can neither find the way by himself, nor will be led by others, is a wretch without use or value.”1

If we survey the moral world, it will be found, that the same division may be made of men, with regard to their virtue. There are some whose principles are so firmly fixed, whose conviction is so constantly present to their minds, and who have raised in themselves such ardent wishes for the approbation of God, and the happiness with which he has promised to reward obedience and perseverance,a that they rise above all other cares and considerations, and uniformly examine every action andb desire, by comparing it with the divine commands. There are others in a kind of equipoise between good and ill; who are moved on one part by riches or pleasure, byc the gratifications of passion, and the delights of sense; and, on the other, by laws of which they own the obligation, and rewards of which they believe the reality, and whom a very small addition of weight turns either way. The third class consists of beings immersed in pleasure, or abandoned to passion, without any desire of higher good, or any effort to extend their thoughts beyond immediate and gross satisfactions.

The second class is so much the most numerous,d that it may be considered as comprising the whole body of mankind. Thosee of the last are not very many, and thosef of the first are very few; and neither the one nor the other fall much under the consideration of the moralist, whose precepts are intended chiefly for those who are endeavouring to go forward up the steeps of virtue, not for those who have already reached the summit, or those who are resolved to stay for ever in their present situation.

To a man not versed in the living world, butg accustomed to judgeh only by speculative reason, it is scarcely credible that any one should be in this state of indifference, or stand undetermined and unengaged, ready to follow the first call to either side. It seems certain, that either a man musti believe that virtue will make him happy, and resolve therefore to be virtuous, or thinkj that he may be happy without virtue, and therefore cast off all care but for his present interest.2 It seems impossible that conviction should be on one side, and practice on the other; and that he who has seen the right way, should voluntarily shut his eyes, that he may quit it with more tranquillity. Yet all these absurdities are every hour to be found; the wisest and best men deviate from known and acknowledged duties, by inadvertency or surprise;k and most are good no longer than while temptation is away, than while their passions are without excitements,l and their opinions are free from the counteraction of any other motive.

Among the sentiments which almost every man changes as he advances into years, is the expectation of uniformity of character. He that without acquaintance with the power of desire, the cogency of distress, the complications of affairs, or the force of partialm influence, has filled his mind with the excellence of virtue, andn having never tried his resolution in any encounters with hope or fear, believes it able to stand firm whatever shall oppose it, will beo always clamorous against the smallest failure, ready to exact the utmost punctualities of right, and to consider every man that fails in any part of his duty, as without conscience and without merit; unworthy of trust, or love, ofp pity, or regard; as an enemy whom all should join to drive out of society, as a pest which all should avoid, or as a weed which all should trample.

It is not but by experience, that we are taught the possibility of retaining some virtues, and rejecting others, or of being good or badq to a particular degree. For it is very easy to the solitary reasoner to prove that the same arguments by which the mind is fortified against one crime are of equal force against all, and the consequence very naturally follows, that he whom they fail to move on any occasion, has either never considered them, or has by some fallacy taught himself to evade their validity; and that, therefore, when a man is known to be guilty of one crime, no farther evidence is needful of his depravity and corruption.

Yet such is the state of all mortal virtue, that it is always uncertain and variable, sometimes extending to the whole compass of duty, and sometimes shrinking into a narrow space, and fortifying only a few avenues of the heart, while all the rest is left open to the incursions of appetite, or given up to the dominion of wickedness. Nothing therefore is more unjust than to judge of man by too short an acquaintance, and too slight inspection; for it often happens, that in the loose, and thoughtless, and dissipated, there is a secret radical worth, which may shoot out by proper cultivation; that the spark of heaven, though dimmed and obstructed, is yet notr extinguished, but may by the breath of counsel and exhortation be kindled into flame.

To imagine that every one who is not completely good is irrecoverably abandoned, is to suppose that all are capable of the same degrees of excellence; it is indeed to exact, from all, that perfections which none ever can attain. And since the purest virtue is consistent with some vice, and the virtue of the greatest number with almost an equal proportion of contrary qualities, let none too hastily conclude that all goodness is lost, though it may for a time be clouded and overwhelmed; fort most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them, roll down any torrent of custom in which they happen to be caught, or bend to any importunity that bears hard against them.

It may be particularly observed of women, that they are for the most part good or bad, as they fall among those who practiseu vice or virtue; and that neither education nor reason gives them much security against the influence of example. Whether it be that they have less courage to stand against opposition, or that their desire of admiration makes them sacrifice their principles to the poor pleasure of worthless praise, it is certain, whatever be the cause, that female goodnessv seldom keeps itsw ground against laughter, flattery, or fashion.

For this reason, every one should consider himself as entrusted, not only with his own conduct, but with that of others; and as accountable, not only for the duties which he neglects, or the crimes that he commits, but for that negligence and irregularity which he may encourage or inculcate. Every man, in whatever station, has, or endeavours to have his followers, admirers, and imitators, andx has therefore the influence of his example to watch with care; he ought toy avoid not only crimes but the appearance of crimes, and not only to practise virtue, but to applaud, countenance, and support it. For it is possible that for want of attention we may teach others faults from which ourselves are free, or by az cowardly desertion of aa cause which we ourselves approve, may pervertb those who fix their eyes upon us, and having noc rule of their own to guide their course,d are easily mislede by the aberrations of that example which they chuse for their direction.f

Of this kind is thef well known and well attested position, “that life is short,” which may be heard among mankind by an attentive auditor, many times a day, but which never yet within my reach of observation left any impression upon the mind; and perhaps if my readers will turn their thoughts back upon their old friends,g they will find it difficulth to call a single man to remembrance, who appeared to know that life was short till he was about to lose it.

It is observable that Horace, in his account of the characters of men, as they are diversified by the various influence of time, remarks, that the old man is dilator, spe longus, given to procrastination, and inclined to extend his hopes to a great distance.2 So far are we, generally, from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest, we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations asi nothing but a long train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us, which are only excusable in the prime of life.

These reflections were lately excited in my mind, by an evening's conversation with my friend Prospero, who at the age of fifty-five, has bought an estate, andj is now contriving to dispose and cultivate itk with uncommon elegance. His great pleasure is to walk among stately trees, and lye musing in the heat of noon under their shade; he is therefore maturely considering how he shall dispose his walks and his groves, and has at last determined to send for the best plans from Italy, and forbear planting till the next season.

Thus is life trifled away in preparations to do what never can be done, if it be left unattempted till all the requisites which imagination can suggest are gathered together. Where our design terminates only in our own satisfaction, the mistake is of no greatl importance; form the pleasure of expecting enjoyment, is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment; but when manyn others are interested in an undertaking, when any design is formed, in which the improvement or security of mankind is involved, nothing is more unworthy either of wisdom or benevolence, than to delay it from time to time, oro to forget how much every day that passesp over us, takesq away from our power, and how soon an idle purpose to do an action, sinks into a mournful wish that it had once been done.

We are frequently importuned, by the bacchanalian writers, to lay hold on the present hour, to catch the pleasuresr within our reach, and remember that futurity is not at our command.s

But surely these exhortations may, with equal propriety, be applied to better purposes;u it may be at least inculcated, that pleasures are more safely postponed than virtues, and that greater loss is suffered by missing an opportunity of doing good, than an hour of giddy frolick and noisy merriment.

When Baxter had lost a thousand pounds, which he had laid up for the erection of a school, he used frequently to mention the misfortune, as an incitement to be charitable while God gives the power of bestowing, and considered himself as culpable in some degree for having left a good action in the hands of chance, and sufferedv his benevolence to be defeated for want of quickness and diligence.4

It is lamented by Hearne, the learned antiquary of Oxford, that this general forgetfulness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and records; as their employment consists first in collecting and afterwards in arranging or abstracting what libraries afford them,w they ought to amass no more than they can digest; but when they have undertaken a work, they go on searching and transcribing, callx for new supplies, when they are already overburdened, and at last leave their work unfinished. “It is,” says he, “the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him.”5

Thus, not only in the slumber of sloth, but in the dissipation of ill directed industry, is the shortness of life generally forgotten. As some men lose their hours in laziness, because they suppose, that there is time enough for the reparation of neglect;y others busy themselves in providing that no length of life may want employment; and it often happens, that sluggishness and activity are equally surprised by the last summons, and perish not more differently from each other, than the fowl that receivedz the shot in her flight, from her that is killed upon the bush.

Among the many improvements, made by the last centuriesa in human knowledge, may be numbered the exact calculations of the value of life; but whatever may be their use in traffick, they seem very little to have advanced morality. They have hitherto been rather applied to the acquisition of money, than of wisdom; the computer refers none of his calculations to his own tenure, but persists, in contempt of probability, to foretel old ageb to himself, and believes that he is marked out to reach the utmost verge of human existence, and see thousands and ten thousands fall into the grave.

So deeply is this fallacy rooted in the heart, and so strongly guarded by hope and fear against the approach of reason, that neither science nor experience can shake it, and we act as if life were without end, though we see and confess its uncertainty and shortness.

Divines have, with great strength and ardour, shewn the absurdityc of delaying reformation and repentance; a degree of folly indeed, which sets eternity to hazard. It is the same weakness in proportion to the importance of the neglect, to transfer any care, which now claims our attention, to a future time; wed subject ourselves to needless dangers from accidents which early diligence would have obviated, ore perplex our minds by vain precautions, and make provision for the execution of designs, of which the opportunity once missed never will return.f

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every mang may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration, and every day brings its task, which if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. But he that has already trifled away those months and years, in which he should have laboured, must remember that he has now only a part of that of whichh the whole is little; and that since the few moments remaining are to be considered as the last trust of heaven, not one is to be lost.

Those who exalt themselves into the chair of instruction,a without enquiring whether anyb will submit to their authority, havec not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and casual amusements;1 and therefore they have endeavoured only tod inculcate thee more awful virtues, without condescending to regard those pettyf qualities, which grow important only by their frequency, and which thoughg they produce no single acts of heroism, nor astonish us by great events, yet are every moment exerting their influence upon us, andh make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations. They operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know the particles that impregnate iti by their salutary or malignant effects.

You havej shewn yourself not ignorant of the valuek of those subaltern endowments, yet have hithertol neglected to recommend good humour to the world, though a little reflection will shew you that it ism the “balm of being,”2 the quality to which all that adorns or elevates mankind must owe its power of pleasing. Without good humour, learning and bravery can only confern that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desart, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good humour, virtue mayo awe by its dignity, and amaze by its brightness; but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend or attract an imitator.3

Good humour4 may be defined a habit of being pleased;p a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good humour is a state between gayety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regardq the gratification of another.

It is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, andr to shew the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry, and bursts of laughter.s But, though these men may bet for a timeu heard with applause and admiration, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour, as the eye gazes a while on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns achingv away to verdure and to flowers.

Gayety is to good humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance;5 the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other recreates and revives them. Gayety seldom fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy and despair. Good humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.6

It is well known that the most certain way to give any man pleasure, is to persuade him that you receive pleasure from him,7 to encourage him to freedom and confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of superiority as may overbear and depress him. We see many that by this art only, spend their days in the midst of caresses, invitations, and civilities; and without any extraordinary qualities orw attainments, are the universal favourites of both sexes, and certainlyx find a friend in every place.y The darlings of the worldz will, indeed, be generally found such as excite neither jealousy nor fear, anda are not considered as candidates for any eminent degree of reputation, but content themselves with common accomplishments, and endeavour rather to solicitb kindness than to raise esteem; therefore in assemblies and places of resort it seldom fails to happen, that though at the entrance of some particular person every face brightens with gladness, and every hand is extended in salutation, yet if you persue him beyond the first exchange of civilities, you will find him of very small importance, and only welcome to the company, as one by whom all conceive themselves admired, and with whom any one is at liberty to amuse himself when he can find no other auditor or companion, as one with whom all are at ease, who will hear a jest without criticism, and a narrative without contradiction, who laughs with every wit, and yields to every disputer.8

There are many whose vanity always inclines them to associate with those from whom they have no reason to fear mortification; and there are times in which the wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise without the labour of deserving it, in which the most elevated mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be at rest. All therefore are at some hour or another fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relieve them from solitude, without condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear, and he thatc encourages us to please ourselves, will not be long without preference in our affection to those whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us without importance and without regard.

It is remarked by Prince Henry, when he sees Falstaff lying on the ground, that “he could have better spared a better man.”9 He was well acquainted with the vices and follies of him whom he lamented, but while his conviction compelled him to do justice to superior qualities, his tenderness still broke out at the remembrance of Falstaff, of the chearful companion, the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the luxury of idleness, who had gladded him with unenvied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy and despise.

You may perhaps think this account of those who are distinguished for their good humour, not very consistent with the praises which I have bestowed upon it. But surely nothing can more evidently shew the value of this quality, than that it recommends those who are destitute of all other excellencies, andd procures regard to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull.

Good humour is indeed generally degraded by the characters in which it is found; for beinge considered as a cheap and vulgar quality, we find it often neglected by those that havingf excellencies of higher reputation and brighter splendor,g perhaps imagine that they have some right to gratify themselves at the expence of others, and are to demandh compliance, rather than to practise it. It is by some unfortunate mistake that almost all those who have any claim to esteem or love, press their pretensions with too little consideration of others. This mistake my own interest as well as my zeal for general happiness makes me desirous to rectify,i for I have a friend, who because he knows his own fidelity,j and usefulness, is never willing to sink into a companion.k I have a wife whose beauty first subduedl me, and whose witm confirmed her conquest, but whose beauty now serves no other purpose than to entitle hern to tyranny, and whose wit is only used too justify perverseness.

Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the power, or show more crueltyp than to chuse any kind of influence before that of kindness. He that regards the welfare of others, shouldq make his virtue approachable, that it may be lovedr and copied; and he that considerss the wants which every man feels, or will feel of external assistance, mustt rather wish to be surrounded by those that love him, than by those that admire his excellencies, or sollicit his favours; for admiration ceases with novelty,1 and interest gains its end and retires. A man whose great qualities want the ornament of superficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure is exhausted.

If you feel any of that compassion, which you recommend to others, you will not disregarda a case which I have reason from observation to believeb very common, and which I know by experience to be very miserable. And though the querulous are seldom received with great ardour of kindness, I hope to escape the mortification of finding that my lamentations spread the contagion of impatience, and produce anger rather than tenderness. I write not merely to vent the swelling of my heart, but to enquire by what means I may recover my tranquillity; and shallc endeavour at brevity in my narrative, having long known that complaint quickly tires, however elegant, or however just.

I was born in a remote county, of ad family that boastse alliances with the greatest names inf English history, and extends its claims of affinity to the Tudors and Plantagenets. My ancestors,g by little and little, wasted their patrimony, till my father had not enough left for the support of a family, without descending to the cultivation of his own grounds, being condemned to pay three sisters theh fortunes allotted them by my grandfather, who is suspected to have made his will when he was incapable of adjusting properly the claims of his children,i and who, perhaps without design, enriched his daughters by beggaring his son. My aunts being, at the death of their father, neither young nor beautiful, nor very eminent for softness of behaviour,j were sufferedk to live unsolicited, and by accumulatingl the interest of their portionsm grew every day richer and prouder. My father pleased himself with foreseeing that the possessions of those ladies must revert at last to the hereditary estate, and, that his family might lose none of its dignity, resolved to keep me untainted with an lucrative employment; whenever thereforeo I discovered any inclination to the improvement of my condition, my mother never failed to put me in mind of my birth,p and charged me to do nothing with which I might be reproached, when I should come to my aunts' estate.

In all the perplexities or vexations which want of money brought upon us, it was our constant practice to have recourse to futurity. If any of our neighbours surpassed us in appearance, we went home and contrived an equipage, with which the death of my aunts was to supply us. If any purse-proudq upstart was deficient in respect, vengeance was referred to the time in which our estate was to be repaired. We registered every act of civility and rudeness, enquired the number of dishes at every feast, and minuted the furniture of every house, that we might, when the hour of affluence should come, be able to eclipse all their splendor, and surpass all their magnificence.

Upon plans of elegance and schemes of pleasure the day rose and set, and the year went round unregarded, while we were busied in laying out plantations on ground not yet our own, and deliberating whether the manor-house should be rebuilt or repaired. This wasr the amusement of our leisure, ands the solace of our exigencies; we met together only to contrive how our approaching fortune should be enjoyed; for int this our conversation always ended, on whatever subject it began. We had none of the collateral interests, which diversify the life of others with joys and hopes, but had turned our whole attention on one event, which we could neither hasten nor retard, and had no other object of curiosity, than the health or sickness of my aunts, of which we were careful to procure very exact and early intelligence.

This visionary opulence for a while soothed our imagination, but afterwards fired our wishes, and exasperated our necessities, and my father could not always restrain himself from exclaiming, that “no creature had so many lives as a cat and an old maid.” At last upon the recovery of his sister from an ague, which she was supposed to have caught by sparing fire, he began to lose his stomach, and four months afterwardsu sunk into the grave.

My mother, who loved her husband, survived him but a little while, and left me the sole heir of their lands,v their schemes, and their wishes. As I had not enlarged my conceptions either by books or conversation, I differed only from my father by the freshness of my cheeks, and the vigour of my step; and, like him, gave way to no thoughts but of enjoying the wealth which my aunts were hoarding.

At length the eldest fell ill. I paid the civilities and compliments which sickness requires with the utmost punctuality.

I dreamed every night of escutcheons and white gloves, and enquired every morning at an early hour, whether there were any news of my dear aunt. At last a messenger was sent to inform me that I must come to her without the delay of a moment. I went and heard her last advice, but opening her will found that she had left her fortune to her second sister.

I hung my head; the younger sister threatnedw to be married, and every thing was disappointment and discontent. I was in danger of losing irreparably one third of my hopes, and was condemned still to wait for the rest.x Of part of my terror I was soon eased; for the youth, whom his relations would have compelled to marry the old lady, after innumerable stipulations, articles, and settlements, ran away with the daughter of his father's groom; and my aunt, upon this conviction of the perfidy of man, resolved never to listen more to amorous addresses.

Ten years longer I dragged the shackles of expectation, without ever suffering a day to pass, in which I did not compute how much my chance was improved of being rich tomorrow. At last the second lady died, after a short illness, which yet was long enough to afford her time for the disposal of her estate, which she gave to me after the death of her sister.

I was now relieved from part of my misery; a larger fortune, though not in my power, was certain and unalienable; nor was there now anyy danger, that I might at last be frustrated of my hopes by a fretz of dotage, the flatteries of a chambermaid,a the whispers of a tale-bearer,b or the officiousness of a nurse. But my wealthc was yet in reversion, my aunt was to be buried before I could emerge to grandeur andd pleasure; and there were yet, according to my father's observation, nine lives between me and happiness.

I however lived on, without any clamours of discontent, and comforted myself with considering, that all are mortal, and they who are continually decaying, must at last be destroyed.

But let no man from this time suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt. The good gentlewoman was very regular in her hours, and simple in her diet, and in walking or sitting still, waking or sleeping, had always in view the preservation of her health. She was subject to noe disorder but hypochondriac dejection; by which, withoutf intention, she encreased my miseries, forg whenever the weather was cloudy, she would takeh her bed and send me notice that her time was come. I went with all the haste of eagerness, and sometimes received passionate injunctions to be kind to her maid, and directions how the last offices should be performed; but if before my arrival the sun happened to break out, or the wind to change, I met her at the door, or found her in the garden, bustling and vigilant, with all the tokens of long life.

Sometimes however she fell into distempers, and was thrice given over by the doctor, yet she found means of slipping through the gripe of death, and after having tortured me three months ati each time with violent alternations of hope and fear, came out of her chamber without any other hurt than thej loss of flesh, which in a few weeks she recovered by broths and jellies.k

As most have sagacity sufficient to guess at the desires of an heir, it was the constant practice of those who were hoping at second hand, and endeavoured to secure my favour against the time when I should be rich, to pay their court, by informing me that my aunt began to droop, that she had lately a bad night, that she coughed feebly, and that she could never climb May hill; or at least, that the autumnl would carry her off. Thus was I flattered in the winter with the piercing winds of March, and in summer, with the fogs of September. But she lived through spring and fall, and set heat and cold at defiance, till after near half a century, I buried her onm the fourteenth of last June, aged ninety-three years, five months, and six days.

For two months after her death I was rich, and was pleased with that obsequiousness and reverence which wealth instantaneously procures. But this joy is now past, and I have returned again to my old habit of wishing. Being accustomed to give the future full power over my mind, and to start away from the scene before me to some expected enjoyment, I deliver up myself to the tyrannyn of every desire which fancy suggests, and long for a thousand things which I am unable to procure. Money has much less power, than is ascribed to it by those that want it.o I had formed schemes which I cannot execute, I had supposed events which do not come to pass, and the rest of my life must passp in craving solicitude, unless you can find some remedy for a mind, corrupted with an inveterate disease of wishing, and unable to think on any thing but wants, which reason tells me will never be supplied.

No disease of the mind can more fatally disable it from benevolence, the chief dutyj of social beings, than ill humour or peevishness; for tho' it breaks not out in paroxysms of outrage, nor bursts into clamour,k turbulence, and bloodshed, itl wears out happiness by slow corrosion,m and small injuries incessantly repeated. It may be considered as the canker of life, that destroys its vigour, and checks its improvement, that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.

Peevishness, when it has been so far indulged, as to outrun the motions of the will, and discover itself without premeditation, is a species of depravity in the highest degree disgusting and offensive, becausen no rectitude of intention, nor softness of address, can ensure a moment's exemption from affront and indignity. While we are courting the favour of a peevish man, ando exerting ourselves in the most diligent civility, an unlucky syllable displeases, an unheeded circumstance ruffles and exasperates; and in the moment whenp we congratulate ourselves upon having gained a friend, our endeavours are frustrated at once,q and all our assiduity forgotten in the casual tumult of some trifling irritation.

This troublesome impatience is sometimes nothing more than the symptom of some deeper malady. He that is angry without daring to confess his resentment, or sorrowful without the liberty of telling his grief, is too frequently inclined to give vent to the fermentations of his mind at the first passages that are opened, and to let his passions boil over upon those whom accident throws in his way. A painful and tedious course of sickness frequently producesr such an alarming apprehension of the leasts increase of uneasiness, as keeps the soul perpetually on the watch,t such a restless and incessant solicitude, as no care oru tenderness can appease, and can only be pacified by the cure of the distemper, and the removal of thatv pain by which it is excited.

Nearly approaching to this weakness, is the captiousness of old age. When the strength is crushed, the senses arew dulled, and the common pleasures of lifex become insipid by repetition, we are willing to impute our uneasinessy to causes not wholly out of our power, and please ourselves with fancying that we suffer by neglect, unkindness,z or any evil which admits a remedy, rather than by the decays of nature, which cannot be prevented,a or repaired. We therefore revenge our pains upon those on whom we resolve to charge them; and too often drive mankind away at the time we have the greatest need of tendernessb and assistance.

But though peevishness may sometimes claim our compassion, as the consequence or concomitant of misery, it is very often found, where nothing can justify or excuse its admission. It is frequentlyc one of the attendants on the prosperous, and is employedd by insolence in exacting homage, ore by tyranny in harrassing subjection. It isf the offspring of idleness org pride; of idleness anxious for trifles; orh pride unwilling to endure the least obstruction of heri wishes. Those who have long lived in solitude indeed naturally contract this unsocial quality, because, having long had only themselves to please, they do not readily depart from their own inclinations; their singularities therefore are only blameable, whenj they have imprudently or morosely withdrawn themselves from the world; but there are others, who have, without any necessity, nursed up this habit in their minds, by making implicit submissiveness the condition of their favour, and suffering none to approach them, but those whok never speak but to applaud, or move but to obey.

He that gives himself up to his own fancy, and converses with none but such as he hires to lull him onl the down of absolute authority, to sooth him with obsequiousness, and regale him with flattery, soon grows too slothful for the labour of contest, too tender for the asperity of contradiction, and too delicate for the coarseness of truth; am little opposition offends, a little restraint enrages, and a little difficulty perplexes him; havingn been accustomed to see every thing give way to his humour, heo soon forgets his own littleness, and expects to find the world rolling at his beck, and all mankind employed to accommodate and delight him.

Tetrica had ap large fortune bequeathed to her byq an aunt, which made her very early independent,r and placed her in a state of superiority to all about her. Havings no superfluity of understanding, shet was soon intoxicated by the flatteries of her maid, who informed her that ladies, such as she, had nothing to do but take pleasure their own way; that she wanted nothing from others, and had therefore no reason to value their opinion; that money was every thing; and that they who thought themselves ill-treated, should look for better usage among their equals.

Warm with these generous sentiments, Tetrica came forth into the world, in which she endeavoured to force respect byu haughtiness of mien andv vehemence of language; but having neither birth,w beauty, nor witx in any uncommon degree, she suffered such mortificationsy from those who thought themselves at liberty to return her insults, asz reduced her turbulence to coolera malignity, and taught her to practiseb her arts of vexation only wherec she might hope to tyrannize without resistance.d She continued from her twentieth to her fifty fifth year to torment all her inferiors with so much diligence, that she has formed ae principle of disapprobation, and finds in every place something to grate her mind, and disturb her quiet.

If she takes the air, she isf offended with the heat or cold, the glare of the sun, or the gloom of the clouds; if she makes a visit, the room in which she is to be received, is too light, or too dark, or furnished with something which she cannot see without aversion. Her tea is never of the right sort; the figures on the China give her disgust. Where there are children she hates the gabble of brats; where there are none, she cannot bear a place without some chearfulness and rattle.g If many servants are kept in a house, she never fails to tell how Lord Lavish was ruined by a numerous retinue; if few, she relates the story of a miser that made his company wait on themselves. She quarrelled with one family, because she had an unpleasant view from their windows; with another, because the squirrel leaped within two yards of her; and with a third, because she could not bear the noise of the parrot.

Of milliners and mantua-makers she is the proverbial torment. She compels them to alter their work, then to unmake it, and contrive it after another fashion; then changes her mind, and likes it better as it was at first; then will have a small improvement. Thush she proceeds till no profit can recompense the vexation; they at last leave the cloathsi at her house, and refuse to serve her.j Her maid,k the only being that can endure herl tyranny, professes to take her own course, and hear her mistress talk. Such is the consequence of peevishness; it can be borne onlym when it is despised.

It sometimes happens that too close an attention to minute exactness, or a too rigorous habitn of examining every thing by the standard of perfection, vitiates the temper, rather than improves the understanding, and teaches the mind to discern faults with unhappy penetration.3 It is incident likewise to men of vigorous imagination to please themselves too much with futurities, and to fret because those expectations areo disappointed, which shouldp neverq have been formed. Knowledge and genius are often enemies to quiet, by suggesting ideas of excellence, which men and the performances of men cannot attain.4 But let no man rashly determine, that his unwillingness to be pleased is a proof of understanding,5 unless his superiority appears from less doubtful evidence; for though peevishness may sometimes justly boast its descent from learning or from wit, it is much oftener of base extraction, the child of vanity, and nursling of ignorance.

The diligence with which you endeavour to cultivate the knowledge of nature, manners, and life, will perhaps incline you to pay some regard to the observations of one who has been taught to know mankind by unwelcome information, and whose opinions are the result, not of solitary conjectures, but of practice and experience.

I was born to a large fortune, and bred to the knowledge of those arts which are supposed to accomplish the mind, anda adorn the person of a woman. To these attainments which custom and education almost forced upon me, I added some voluntary acquisitions by the use of books, and the conversation of that species of men whom the ladies generally mention with terrorb and aversion andira c the name of scholars, but whom I have fonda d a harmless and inoffensive order of beings, not so much wiser than ourselves, but that they may receive as well as communicate knowledge, and more inclined to degrade their own character by cowardly submission, than to overbear or oppress us with their learning or their wit.

From these men, however, if they are by kind treatment encouraged to talk, something may be gained, which embellished with elegance, and softened by modesty, will always add dignity and value to female conversation; and from my acquaintance with the bookish part of the world I derived many principles of judgment and maxims of prudence,e by which I was enabled tof draw upon myself the general regard in every place of concourse or pleasure. My opinion was the great rule of approbation, my remarks were remembred by those who desired the second degree of fame, my mien was studied, my dress was imitated, my letters were handed from one family to another, and read by those who copied them as sent to themselves, my visits were solicited as honors, and multitudes boasted of an intimacy with Melissa, who had only seen me by accident, and whose familiarity had never proceeded beyond the exchange of a compliment, or return of a courtesy.

I shall make no scruple of confessing that I was pleased with this universal veneration, because I always considered it as paid to my intrinsic qualities and inseparable merit, and very easily persuadedg myself, that fortune had no part in my superiority. When I looked upon my glass I saw youth and beauty, withh health that might give me reason to hope their continuance: when I examined my mind, I found some strength of judgment, and fertility of fancy; and was told that every action was grace, and that every accent was persuasion.i

In this manner my life passed like a continual triumph amidst acclamations, and envy, and courtship, and caresses: to please Melissa was the general ambition, and every stratagem of artful flattery was practised upon me. To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, ourj power, and shew that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falshood. But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected, for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the powers of discernment with much vigour when self-love favours the deceit.

The number of adorers, and the perpetual distraction of my thoughts by new schemes of pleasure, prevented me from listening to any of those who croud in multitudes to give girls advice, and kept me unmarried and unengaged to my twenty-seventh year, when, ask I was towering in all the pride of uncontested excellency, with a face yet little impaired, and a mind hourly improving, the failure of a fund, in which my money was placed, reduced me to a frugal competency, which allowed little beyond neatness and independence.

I bore the diminution of my riches without any outrages of sorrow, or pusillanimityl of dejection. Indeed I did not know how much I had lost, for, having always heard and thought more of my wit and beauty, than of my fortune, it did not suddenly enter my imagination, that Melissa could sink beneath her established rank, while her form and her mind continued the same; that she could cease to raise admiration but by ceasing to deserve it, or feel any stroke but from the hand of time.

It was in my power to have concealed the loss, and to have married, by continuing the same appearance, with all the credit of my original fortune; but I was not so far sunk in my own esteem, as to submit to the baseness of fraud, or to desire any other recommendation than sense and virtue. I therefore dismissed my equipage, sold those ornaments which were become unsuitable to my new condition, and appeared among those with whom I used to converse with less glitter, but with equal spirit.

I found myself received at every visit, withm sorrow beyond what is naturally felt for calamities in which we have no part, and was entertained with condolence and consolation, son frequently repeated, that my friends plainly consulted, rather their own gratification, than my relief. Some from that time refused my acquaintance, and forbore,o without any provocation, to repay my visits; some visited me, but after a longer interval than usual, and every return was still with more delay; nor did any of my female acquaintances fail to introduce the mention of my misfortunes, to compare my present and former condition, to tell me how much it must trouble me to want the splendor which I became so well, to look at pleasures, which I had formerly enjoyed, and to sink to a level with those by whom I hadp been considered as moving in a higher sphere, and who had hitherto approached meq with reverence and submission, which I was nowr no longer to expect.

Observations like these, are commonly nothing better thans covert insults, whicht serve to give vent to the flatulence of pride, but they are now and then imprudently uttered by honesty and benevolence, and inflict pain where kindness is intended; I will, therefore, so far maintain my antiquated claim to politeness, as to venture the establishment ofu this rule, that no one ought to remind another of misfortunesv of which the sufferer does not complain, and which there are no means proposed of alleviating. You have now right to excite thoughts which necessarily give pain whenever they return, andx which perhaps might not have revivedy but by absurd and unseasonable compassion.

My endless train of lovers immediately withdrew, without raising any emotions. The greater part had indeed always professed to court, as it is termed, upon the square, had enquired my fortune, and offered settlements;z these had undoubtedly a right to retire without censure, since they had openly treated for money, as necessary to their happiness, and who can tell how little they wanted any other portion? I have always thought the clamours of women unreasonable, who imagine themselves injured because the mena who followed them upon the supposition of a greater fortune, reject them when they are discovered to have less. I have never known any lady, who did not think wealth a title to some stipulations in her favour; and surely what is claimed by the possession of money is justly forfeited by its loss. She that has once demanded a settlement has allowed the importance of fortune; and when she cannot shew pecuniary merit, why should she think her cheapener obliged to purchase?

My lovers were not all contented with silent desertion. Some of them revenged the neglect which they had formerly enduredb by wanton and superfluous insults, and endeavoured to mortify me by paying in my presence those civilities to other ladies, which were once devoted only to me. But, as it had been my rule to treat men according to the rank of their intellect, I had never suffered any one to waste his life in suspense, who could have employed it to better purpose, and had thereforec no enemies but coxcombs, whose resentment and respect were equally below my consideration.

The only pain which I have felt from degradation, is the loss of that influence which I had always exerted on the side of virtue, in the defence of innocence, and the assertion of truth. I now findd my opinions slighted, my sentiments criticised, and my arguments opposed by those that used to listen to me without reply, and struggle to be first in expressing their conviction. The female disputants have wholly thrown off my authority, and if I endeavour to enforce my reasons by an appeal to the scholars that happen to be present, the wretches are certain to pay their court by sacrificing me and my system to a finer gown, and I am every hour insulted with contradiction bye cowards, who could never find till lately that Melissa was liable to error.

There are two persons only whom I cannot charge with having changed their conduct with my change of fortune. One is an old curate that has passed his life in the duties of his profession, with great reputation for his knowledge and piety; the other is a lieutenant of dragoons. The parson made no difficulty in the height of my elevation to check me when I was pert, and instructf me when I blundered; and if there is any alteration, he is now more timorous lest his freedom should be thought rudeness. The soldier never paid me any particular addresses, but very rigidly observed all the rules of politeness, which he is now so far from relaxing, that whenever he serves the tea, he obstinately carries me the first dish, in defiance of the frowns and whispers of theg table.

This, Mr. Rambler, is “to see the world.” It is impossible for those that have only known affluence and prosperity, to judge rightly of themselves or others. The rich and the powerful live in a perpetual masquerade, in which all about them wear borrowed characters; and we only discover in what estimation we are held, when we can no longer give hopes or fears.

Iti is natural to mean well, when only abstractedj ideas of virtue are proposed to the mind, andk no particular passionl turns us aside from rectitude;1 and so willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten;2 hem that acknowledges the obligations of morality, and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue, though he has no longer any regard to her precepts, than they conform to his own desires; and counts himself among her warmest lovers, because he praises her beauty, though every rival steals away his heart.

There are, however, great numbers who have little recourse to the refinements of speculation, but who yet live at peace with themselves, by means which require less understanding, or less attention. When their hearts aren burthened with the consciousness of a crime, instead of seeking for some remedy within themselves, they look round upon the rest of mankind, to find others tainted with the same guilt:o they please themselves with observing, that they have numbers on their side;p and that though they are hunted out from the society of good men, they are not likely to be condemned to solitude.

It may be observed, perhaps without exception, that none are so industrious to detect wickedness,q or so ready to impute it,r as theys whose crimes are apparent and confessed. They envyt an unblemished reputation, and what they envy they are busy to destroy: they are unwilling to suppose themselves meaner, and more corrupt than others, and thereforeu willingly pull down from their elevations those with whom they cannot rise to an equality. No man yet was everv wicked without secret discontent, and according to the different degrees of remaining virtue, or unextinguished reason, he either endeavours to reform himself, or corrupt others; either to regain the station which he has quitted, or prevail on others to imitate his defection.

It has been always considered as an alleviation of misery not to suffer alone, even when union and society can contribute nothing to resistance or escape; some comfort of the same kind seems to incite wickedness to seek associates, though indeed another reason may be given, for as guilt is propagated the power of reproach is diminished, and among numbers equally detestablew every individual may be sheltered from shame, though not from conscience.

Another lenitive by which the throbs of the breast arex assuaged, is, the contemplation, not of the same, but of different crimes. He that cannot justify himself by his resemblance to others, is ready to try some other expedient, and to enquire what will rise to his advantage from opposition and dissimilitude. He easily finds some faultsy in every human being, which he weighs against his own, andz easily makes them preponderate while he keeps the balance in his own hand, and throws in or takes out at hisa pleasure circumstances that make them heavier or lighter. He then triumphs in his comparative purity, and sets himself at ease, not because he can refute the chargesb advanced against him, but because he can censure his accusers with equal justice,c and no longer fears the arrows of reproach, when he has stored his magazine of maliced with weapons equally sharp and equally envenomed.

This practice, though never just, is yete specious and artful, when the censure is directed against deviations tof the contrary extreme. The man who is branded with cowardice, may, with some appearance of propriety, turn all his force of argumentg against a stupid contempt of life, and rash precipitation into unnecessary danger. Every recession from temerity is an approach towards cowardice, and though it be confessed that bravery, like other virtues, stands between faults on either hand, yet the place of the middle point may always be disputed; he may thereforeh often impose upon careless understandings,i by turning the attention wholly from himself, and keeping it fixed invariably on the opposite fault; andj by shewing how many evils are avoided by his behaviour, hek may conceal for a time those which are incurred.

But vice has not always opportunities or address for such artful subterfuges; men often extenuatel their own guilt, only by vague and general charges upon others, or endeavourm to gain rest to themselves, by pointingn some other prey to the persuit of censure.

Every whisper of infamy is industriously circulated, every hint of suspicion eagerly improved, and every failure of conduct joyfully published, by those whose interest it is, that the eye and voice of the publick should be employed on any rather than on themselves.

All these artifices, and a thousand others equally vain and equally despicable, are incited by that conviction of the deformity of wickedness, from which none can set himself free, and byo an absurd desire to separate the cause from the effects, and top enjoy the profit of crimes without suffering the shame. Men are willing to try all methods of reconciling guiltq and quiet, and when their understandings are stubborn and uncomplying, raise their passions against them, and hope to over-powerr their own knowledge.

It is generally not so much the desire of men, sunk into depravity,s to deceive the world as themselves,3 for when no particular circumstances make them dependant ont others, infamy disturbs them little,u but as it revives their remorse, and is echoed to them from their own hearts. The sentence most dreadedv is that of reason and conscience, which they would engage on their side at any price but the laboursw of duty, and the sorrows of repentance. Forx this purpose every seducement and fallacy is sought, the hopes still rest upon some new experiment till life is at an end;y and the last hour steals on unperceived, while the faculties are engaged in resisting reason,z and repressing the sense of the divine disapprobation.

Mene are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes; and as there has never been a time of such general felicity, but that many have failed to obtain the rewardsf to which they had, in their own judgment, a just claim, some offended writer has always declaimed in the rage of disappointment, against his age or nation; norg is there one who has not fallen upon times more unfavourable to learning than any former century, orh who does not wish, that he had been reserved in the insensibility of non-existence to some happier hour, when literary merit shall no longer be despis'd, and the gifts and caresses of mankind shall recompence the toils of study, and add lustre toi the charms of wit.

Many of these clamours are undoubtedly to be considered only as the bursts of pride never to be satisfied, as the prattle of affectation mimicking distresses unfelt, or as the commonplacesj of vanity solicitous for splendour of sentences, and acuteness of remark. Yet it cannot be denied that frequentk discontent must proceed from frequentl hardships, and tho' it is evident, that not more than one age or people canm deserve the censure of being moren averse from learning than any other, yeto at all times knowledge must havep encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harrassed with persecution.

It is not necessary, however, to join immediately in theq outcry, or to condemn mankind as pleased with ignorance, or alwaysr envious of superior abilities. The miseries of the learned have been related by themselves; and since they have not been found exempt from that partiality with which mens look upon their own actions and sufferings, we may conclude that they have not forgotten to deck their cause with thet brightest ornaments, and strongest colours. The logicianu collected all his subtilties when they werev to be employed in his own defence; and the master of rhetoric exerted against his adversary all the arts by which hatred is embittered, and indignationw inflamed.

To believe no man in his own cause, is the standing and perpetual rule of distributive justice. Since therefore,x in the controversy between the learned and their enemies, we have only the pleasy of one party, of the party more able to delude our understandings,z and engage our passions, we musta determine our opinion by factsb uncontested, and evidencesc on each side allowed to be genuine.

By this procedure,d I know not whether the studentse will find their cause promoted, or the compassion which they expectf much increased. Let their conduct be impartially surveyed; let them be allowed no longer to direct attention at their pleasure, by expatiating on their own deserts; let neither the dignity of knowledge over-awe the judgment, nor the graces of elegance seduce it. It will then, perhaps, be found, that they were not able to produce claims to kinder treatment, but provoked the calamities which they suffered, andg seldom wanted friends, but when they wanted virtue.

That few men, celebrated for theoretic wisdom, live with conformity to their precepts, must be readily confessed; and we cannot wonder that the indignation of mankind rises with great vehemence against those, who neglect theh duties which they appear to know with so strong conviction the necessity of performing. Yet since no man hasi power of acting equal to that of thinking, I know not whether the speculatist may not sometimes incur censures too severe, and by those, who formj ideas of his life from their knowledge of his books, be considered as worse than others, only because he was expected to be better.1

He, by whose writings the heart is rectified, the appetites counter-acted, and the passionsk repressed, may be considered as not unprofitable to the great republick of humanity, even though his behaviour should not always exemplify his rules. His instructions may diffuse their influence to regions, in which it will not be inquired, whether the author be albus an ater, good or bad; to times, when all his faults and all his follies shall be lost in forgetfulness, among things of no concern or importance to the world; and he may kindle in thousands and ten thousands that flame which burnt but dimly in himself, through the fumes of passion, or the damps of cowardice. The vicious moralist may be considered as a taper, by which we are lighted through the labyrinth of complicated passions; hel extends his radiance farther than his heat, and guides all that are within view, but burns only those who make too near approaches.

Yet, since good or harm must be received for the most part from those to whom we are familiarly known, he whose vices over-powerm his virtues, in the compass to which his vices can extend, hasn no reason to complain that he meets not with affection or veneration, when those with whom he passes his life are more corrupted by his practice than enlightened by his ideas. Admirationo begins where acquaintance ceases; andp his favourers are distant, but his enemies at hand.

Yet manyq have dared to boast of neglected merit, and to challenge their age for cruelty and folly, of whomr it cannot be alleged that they have endeavoured to increase the wisdom or virtue of their readers. They haves been at once profligate in their lives, and licentious in their compositions; have not only forsaken the paths of virtue, butt attempted to lure others after them. They have smoothedu the road of perdition, coveredv with flowers the thorns of guilt, and taughtw temptation sweeter notes, softer blandishments, and stronger allurements.

It has been apparently the settled purpose of somex writers, whose powersy and acquisitions place them high in the ranks of literature, to set fashion on the side of wickedness; to recommend debauchery, and lewdness, by associating them with qualitiesz most likely to dazzle the discernment, and attract the affections; and to show innocence and goodness with such attendant weaknessesa as necessarily expose them to contempt and derision.

Suchb naturally found intimatesc among the corrupt, the thoughtless, and the intemperate; passed their lives amidstd thee levities of sportive idleness, or the warm professions of drunken friendship; and fed their hopes with the promises of wretches, whom their preceptsf had taught to scoff at truth. But when fools had laughed away their sprightliness, and the languors of excessg could no longer be relieved, they saw their protectorsh hourly drop away, and wondered and stormed to find themselves abandoned. Whether their companions persisted in wickedness, or returned to virtue, they were lefti equally without assistance; for debauchery is selfish and negligent, and from virtue the virtuous only can expect regard.

It is said by Florus of Catiline, who died in the midst of slaughtered enemies, that “his death had been illustrious, had it been suffered for his country.”2 Of the wits, who have languished away life under the pressures of poverty, orj in the restlessness of suspense,k caressed and rejected, flattered and despised, as they were of more or less use to those who stiled themselves their patrons, it might be observed, that their miseries would enforce compassion, had they been brought upon them by honesty and religion.

The wickedness of a loose or profane authorl is more atrociousm than that of the giddyn libertine, or drunken ravisher, not only becauseo it extends its effects wider; as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but becausep it is committed with cool deliberation. By the instantaneous violence of desireq a good man may sometimes be surprised before reflection can come to his rescue; when the appetitesr have strengthened their influence by habit, they are not easily resisted or suppress'd;s but for the frigid villainy of studious lewdness, for the calmt malignity of laboured impiety, what apologyu can be invented? Whatv punishment can be adequate tow the crime of him who retires to solitudes for the refinement of debauchery; whox tortures his fancy, and ransacks his memory, only that he may leave the world less virtuous than he found it; that he may intercepty the hopes of the rising generation; and spread snares for the soul with more dexterity?

What were their motives, or what their excuses, is below the dignity of reason to examine. If havingz extinguished in themselves the distinction of right and wrong, theya were insensible of the mischief which they promoted,b they deservedc to be hunted down by the general compact, as no longer partaking of social nature;d ife influenced by the corruption of patrons, or readers, theyf sacrificed their own convictions to vanity or interest, they wereg to be abhorred with more acrimony than he thath murders for pay; since they committed greater crimes without greateri temptations.

“Of him, to whom much is given, much shall be required.”3 Those, whom God has favoured with superiour faculties, and made eminent forj quickness of intuition, and accuracy of distinctions,k will certainly be regarded as culpable in his eye,l for defects and deviations which, in souls lessm enlightened, may be guiltless. But, surely, none can think without horror on that man's condition, who has been more wicked in proportion as hen had more means of excelling in virtue, and used the light imparted from heaven only to embellish folly, and shed lustre upono crimes.

Yet ite seems to be the condition of our present state, that pain should be more fixed and permanent than pleasure. Uneasiness gives way by slow degrees, and is long before it quits its possession of the sensory; but all our gratifications are volatile,f vagrant, and easily dissipated. The fragrance of the jessamine bower is lost after the enjoyment of a few moments, and the Indian wanders among his native spicesg without any sense of their exhalations. It is, indeed, not necessary to shew by many instances whath all mankind confess, by an incessant call for variety, andi restless pursuit of enjoyments, which they value only because unpossessed.

Something similar, or analogous, may be observed in effectsj produced immediately upon the mind; nothing can strongly strike or affect us, but what is rare or sudden. Thek most important events, when they become familiar, are no longer considered with wonder or solicitude, and that which at first filled up our whole attention, and left no place for any other thought, is soon thrust aside into some remote repositoryl of the mind, and lies among other lumber of the memory, over-looked and neglected. Thus far the mind resembles the body, but here the similitude is at an end.

Them manner in which external force acts upon the body is very little subject to the regulation of the will; no man can at pleasure obtundn or invigorate his senses, prolong the agency of any impulse, or continue the presence of any image traced upon the eye, or any sound infused into the ear. Buto our ideas are more subjected to choice; we can call them before us, and command their stay, we can facilitate and promote their recurrence, we can either repress their intrusion, or hasten their retreat. It is therefore the business of wisdom and virtue, to select among numberless objectsp striving for our notice, such as may enableq us to exalt our reason, extend our views, and secure our happiness.1 But this choice is to be made with very little regard to rareness or frequency; for nothing is valuable merelyr because it is either rares or common, but because it is adapted to some useful purpose, and enables us to supply some deficiency of our nature.

Milton hast judiciously represented the father of mankind, asu seized with horror and astonishment at the sight of death, exhibitedv to him on the mount of vision.2 For surely, nothing can so much disturb the passions, or perplex the intellects of man, as thew disruption of his union with visible nature; a separation from all that has hitherto delighted or engaged him; a change not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an entrance into a state not simply which he knows not, but which perhaps he has not faculties to know; an immediate and perceptible communication with the supreme Being, and, what is above all distressful and alarming, the final sentence, and unalterable allotment.

Yet we tox whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplatingy mortality, can without emotion, see generations of men pass away, andz are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, anda adjust the ceremonial of death. We can lookb upon funeralc pomp as a common spectacle in which we have no concern, and turn away from it to trifles and amusements, without dejection of look, or inquietude of heart.

It is, indeed, apparent from the constitution of the world, that there must be a time for other thoughts; and a perpetual meditation upon the last hour, however it may become the solitude of a monastery, is inconsistent with many duties of common life. But surely the remembrance of death ought to predominate in our minds, as an habitual and settled principle, always operating, though not always perceived; and our attention should seldom wander so far from our own condition, as not to be recalled and fixed by sight of an event, which must soon, we know not how soon, happen likewise to ourselves, and of which, though we cannot appoint the time, we may secure the consequence.

Everyd instance of death may justly awaken our fears and quicken our vigilance, but its frequency so much weakens its effect, that we are seldome alarmed, unless some close connexion is broken, some scheme frustrated, or some hope defeated. Many therefore seem to pass on from youth to decrepitudef without any reflection on the end of life, because they are wholly involved within themselves, and look on others only as inhabitants of the common earth,g without any expectation of receiving good, or intention of bestowing it.

Events, of which we confess the importance, excite little sensibility, unless they affect us more nearly than as sharers in the common interest of mankind;h that desire which every man feels of being remembered and lamented, is often mortified when we remarki how little concern is caused by the eternal departure even of those who have passed their lives with publick honours, and been distinguished byj extraordinary performances. It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness except by a few. That merit which gives greatnessk and renown, diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat. The wit, the hero, the philosopher, whoml their tempers or their fortunes have hindered from intimate relations, diem without any other effect than that of adding a new topic to the conversation of the day. Theyn impress none with any fresh conviction of the fragility of our nature, because none had any particular interest in their lives, or was united to them by a reciprocation of benefits and endearments.

Thuso it often happens, that those who in their lives were applauded and admired,p are laid at last in the ground without the common honour of a stone; because by those excellencies with which many wereq delighted, none hadr been obliged, and, though they had many to celebrate,s they had none to love them.

Custom so far regulates the sentiments at least of common minds, that I believe men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age. He,t who, when life was new, melted at the loss of every companion, can look in time without concern, upon the grave into which his last friend was thrown, and into which himself is ready to fall; not that he is more willing to die than formerly, but that he is more familiar to the death of others, and therefore is not alarmed so far as to consider how much nearer he approaches to his end. But this is to submit tamely to the tyranny of accident, and to suffer our reason to lie useless. Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare for that state, into which it shews usu that we must sometime enter; and the summons isv more loud and piercing, as the event of which it warns us is at less distance. To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.

It has always appearedw to me one of the most striking passages in the visions of Quevedo, whichx stigmatises those as fools who complain that they failed of happiness by sudden death. “How,” says he, “can death be sudden to a being who always knew that he must die, and that the time of his death was uncertain?”3

Since business and gaiety are always drawing our attention away from a future state, some admonition is frequently necessary to recall it to our minds, and what can more properly renew the impression than the examples of mortality which every day supplies? They great incentive to virtue is the reflection that we must die; it will thereforez be useful to accustom ourselves, whenever we see a funeral, to consider how soon we may be added to the number of those whose probation is past, and whose happiness or misery shall endure for ever.

We can form our opinions of that which we know not, only by placing it in comparison with something that we know: whoever therefore is over-run with suspicion, and detects artifice and stratagem in every proposal, must either have learned by experience or observation thed wickedness of mankind, and been taught to avoid fraud by having often suffered or seen treachery,e or he must derive his judgment from the consciousness of his own disposition, and impute to others the same inclinations which he feels predominant in himself.

To learn caution by turning our eyes upon life, and observing the arts by which negligence is surprised, timidity overborne,f and credulity amused, requires eitherg great latitude of converse and long acquaintance with business, or uncommon activity of vigilance, and acuteness of penetration. When therefore a young man, not distinguished byh vigour of intellect, comes into the world full of scruples and diffidence; makes a bargain with many provisional limitations; hesitates in his answer to a common question, lest more should be intended than he can immediately discover; has a long reach in detecting the projects of his acquaintance; considers every caress as an act of hypocrisy, and feels neither gratitude nor affection from the tenderness of his friends, because he believes no one to have any real tenderness but for himself; whatever expectations this early sagacity may raise of his future eminence or riches, I can seldom forbear to consider him as a wretch incapable of generosity or benevolence, as a villain early completed beyondi the need of common opportunities and gradual temptations.

Upon men of this class instruction and admonition are generally thrown away, because they consider artifice and deceit as proofs of understanding; they are misled at the same time by the two great seducers of the world, vanity and interest, and not only look upon those who act with openness and confidence, as condemned by their principles to obscurity and want, but as contemptible for narrowness of comprehension, shortness of views, and slowness of contrivance.

The world has been long amused with the mention of policy in publick transactions, and of art in private affairs; they have been considered as the effects of great qualities, and as unattainable by men of the common level: yet I have not found many performances either ofj art, or policy, that required such stupendous efforts of intellect,k or might not have been effected by falshood and impudence, without the assistance of any other powers. To profess what he does not mean, to promise what he cannot perform, to flatter ambition with prospects of promotion, and misery with hopes of relief, to sooth pride with appearances of submission, and appease enmity by blandishments and bribes, can surely implyl nothing more or greater than a mind devoted wholly to its own purposes, a face that cannot blush, and a heart that cannot feel.

These practices are so mean and base, that he who finds in himself no tendency to use them, cannot easily believe that they are considered by others with less detestation;m he therefore suffersn himself to slumber in false security, ando becomes a prey to those who applaud their own subtilty, because they knowp how to steal upon his sleep, and exult in the success which they could never have obtained, had they not attempted a man better than themselves, who was hindered from obviating their stratagems,q not by folly, but by innocence.

Suspicion is, indeed, a temper so uneasy and restless, that it is very justly appointed the concomitant of guilt. It is said, that no torture is equal to the inhibition of sleep long continued; a pain, to which the state of that man bears a very exact analogy, who dares never give rest to his vigilance andr circumspection, but considers himself as surrounded by secret foes, and fears to entrusts his children, or his friend, witht the secret that throbs in his breast, and the anxieties that break into his face. To avoid, at this expence, those evils to which easiness and friendshipu might have exposed him, is surely to buy safety at too dear a rate,v and, in the language of the Roman satirist, to save life by losing all for which a wise man would live.2

When in the diet of the German empire, as Camerarius relates, the princes were once displaying their felicity, and each boasting thew advantages of his own dominions, onex who possessed a country not remarkable for the grandeur of its cities, or the fertility of its soil, rose to speak, and the rest listened between pity and contempt, till hey declared, in honour of his territories, that he could travel through them without a guard, and ifz he was weary, sleep in safety upon the lap of the first man whom he should meet; a commendation which would have been ill exchanged for the boast of palaces, pastures, or streams.3

Suspicion is nota less an enemy to virtue than to happiness: he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. It is too common for usb to learn the frauds by which ourselves have suffered; men whoc are once persuaded that deceit will be employed against them,d sometimes think the same arts justified by the necessity of defence. Even theye whose virtue is too well established to give way to example, or be shaken by sophistry, must yet feelf their love of mankind diminished with their esteem, andg grow less zealous for theh happiness of those by whom they imaginei their ownj happiness endangered.

Thus we find old age, upon which suspicion has been strongly impressedk by long intercourse with the world, inflexible and severe, not easily softened by submission, melted by complaint, or subdued by supplication. Frequent experience of counterfeited miseries, and dissembled virtue, in time overcomesl that disposition to tenderness and sympathy, which is so powerful in our younger years, and theym that happen to petition the oldn for compassion or assistance, are doomedo to languish without regard, and sufferp for the crimes of menq who have formerly been found undeserving or ungrateful.

Historians are certainly chargeable with the depravation of mankind, when they relate without censure those stratagems of war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his destruction. A ship comes before a port, weather-beaten and shattered, and the crew implore the liberty of repairing their breaches,r supplying themselves with necessaries, or burying their dead. The humanity of the inhabitants inclines them to consent, the strangers enter the town with weapons concealed, fall suddenlys upon their benefactors, destroy those that make resistance, and become masters of the place; they return home rich with plunder, and their success is recorded to encourage imitation.

But surely war has its laws, and ought to be conducted with some regard to the universal interest of man. Thoset may justly be pursued as enemies to the community of nature,u who suffer hostility to vacate thev unalterable laws of right, and pursue their private advantagew by means, which, if once established,x must destroy kindness,y cut off from every man allz hopes of assistance froma another, and fill the world with perpetual suspicion and implacable malevolence.b Whatever is thus gained ought to be restored, and those who have conqueredc by such treachery may be justlyd denied the protection of their native country.

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him whom he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. Hee that suffers by imposture has too often his virtue more impaired than his fortune. Butf as it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, sog it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion;h it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Wherever we turn our eyes, we find something to revive our curiosity, and engage our attention. In the dusk of the morning we watch the rising of the sun, and see the day diversify the clouds, and open new prospects in its gradual advance. After a few hours, we see the shades lengthen, andf the light decline, till the sky isg resigned to a multitude of shining orbs different from each otherh in magnitude and splendour. The earth varies itsi appearance as we move upon it; the woods offer their shades, and the fields their harvests; the hill flatters with an extensive view, and the valley invites with shelter, fragrance and flowers.

The poets have numbered among the felicities of the golden age, an exemption from the change of seasons, and a perpetuity of spring; but I am not certain that in this state of imaginary happiness they have made sufficient provision for that insatiable demand of new gratifications, which seems particularly to characterize the nature of man.1 Our sense of delight is in a great measure comparative, and arises at once from the sensations which we feel, and those which we remember: Thus ease after torment is pleasure for a time,j and we are very agreeably recreated, when the body, chilled with the weather, is gradually recovering its natural tepidity; but the joy ceases when we have forgot the cold,k we must fall below ease again, if we desire to rise above it, and purchase new felicity by voluntary pain. It is therefore not unlikely that however the fancy may be amused with the description of regions in which no wind is heard but the gentle zephir, and no scenes are displayed, but vallies enamelled with unfading flowers, and woods waving their perennial verdure, we should soon grow weary of uniformity, find our thoughts languish for want of other subjects,l call on heaven for our wonted round of seasons, and think ourselves liberally recompensed for the inconveniencies of summer and winter, by new perceptions of the calmness and mildness of the intermediate variations.

Every season has its particular power of striking the mind. The nakedness and asperity of the wintry worldm always fills the beholder with pensive and profound astonishment; as the variety of the scene is lessened, its grandeur is increased; and the mind is swelled at once by the mingled ideas of the present and the past, of the beauties which have vanished from the eyes, and the waste and desolation thatn are now before them.

It is observed by Milton, that he who neglects to visit the country in spring, and rejects the pleasures that are then in their first bloom and fragrance, is guilty of “sullenness against nature.”2 If we allot different duties to different seasons, he may be charged with equal disobedience to the voice of nature, who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods, without seriousness and awe. Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquillity dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: In the winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softnesso starts at the wailings of hunger, and the cries of the creation in distress.

Few minds have muchp inclination to indulge heaviness and sorrow, nor do I recommend them beyond the degree necessary to maintain in its full vigour that habitual sympathy and tenderness, which, in a world of so much misery, is necessary to the ready discharge of ourq most important duties.

The winter therefore is generally celebrated as the proper season for domestick merriment and gaiety. Wer are seldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpose, than that we may shrink back with more satisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempest, and felt the gripe of the frost, congratulate each other with more gladness upon a close room, an easy chair, a larges fire, and a smoaking dinner.

Winter brings natural inducementst to jollity and conversation. Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep, as by some common calamity: Anu enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the same fire-side those, who, by the opposition of inclinations, or difference of employment,v moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mutual interest to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often wish for the continuance of the social season, with all its bleakness and all its severities.

To the men of study and imagination the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind, and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time in which those, whom literature enables to find amusements for themselves, have more than common convictions of their own happiness. When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are called in to assist the flight of time, they canw find new subjects of enquiry,x and preserve themselves from that weariness which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind.

It cannot indeed be expected of all to be poets and philosophers;y it is necessary that the greaterz part of mankind should be employed in the minutea business of common life; minute,b indeed, not if we considerc its influence upon our happiness, but if we respectd the abilities requisite to conduct it. These must necessarily be more dependent on accident for the means of spending agreeably those hours which their occupations leavee unengaged, orf nature obliges them to allow to relaxation.g Yet evenh on these I would willingly impress such a sense of the value of time, as may incline them to find out for their careless hours amusementsi of more use and dignity than the common games, which not only weary the mind without improving it, but strengthen the passions of envy and avarice, and often lead to fraud and to profusion, to corruption and to ruin. It is unworthy of a reasonable being to spend any of the little time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or oblique, to the end of our existence. And though every moment cannot be laid out on the formal and regular improvement of our knowledge, or in the stated practice of a moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of qualifying us more or less for the better employment of those which are to come.

It is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind,3 or being able to recollect the day by any other token thanj his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorous altercations.

However, as experience isk of more weight than precept, any of my readers, who are contriving how to spend the dreary months before them, may consider which of their past amusements fillsl them now with them greatest satisfaction, and resolve to repeat those gratifications of which the pleasure is most durable.

The intricacy of this disputeh may be alledged as a proof of that tenderness for mankind which providence has, I think, universally displayed, by making attainments easy in proportion as they are necessary. That all the duties of morality ought to be practised, is without difficulty discoverable, because ignorance or uncertainty would immediately involve the world in confusion and distress; but which duty ought to be most esteemed,i we may continue to debate,j withoutk inconvenience, so all be diligently performed as there is opportunity or need: for upon practice, not upon opinion, depends the happiness of mankind; and controversies, merely speculative, are of small importance in themselves, however they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or provoked a faction.

Of the divine author of our religion it is impossible to peruse the evangelical histories, without observing how little he favoured the vanity of inquisitiveness; how much more rarely he condescended to satisfy curiosity, than to relieve distress; and how much he desired that his followers should rather excel in goodness than in knowledge. His precepts tend immediately to the rectification of the moral principles, and thel direction of daily conduct, without ostentation, without art, at once irrefragable and plain, such as well-meaning simplicity may readily conceive,m and of which we cannot mistake the meaning, but when we are afraid to find it.

The measure of justice prescribed to us, in our transactions with others, is remarkably clear and comprehensive: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.”1 A law by which every claim of right may be immediately adjusted, as far as the private conscience requires to be informed; a law, of which every man may find the exposition in his own breast, and which may always be observed without any other qualifications thann honesty of intention, and purity of will.

Over this law, indeed, some sons of sophistryo have been subtlep enough to throw mists, which have darkened their own eyes. To perplex this universal principle, theyq have enquired whether a man, conscious to himself of unreasonable wishes,r be bound to gratify them in another. But surely there needed nos long deliberation to conclude, that the desires, which are to be considered by us ast the measure of right,u must be such as we approve, andv that we ought to pay no regard to those expectations in othersw which we condemn in ourselves, and which, however they may intrude upon our imagination, we know it our duty to resist and suppress.

One of the most celebrated cases which havex been produced as requiring some skill in the direction of consciencey to adapt themz to this great rule, is that of a criminal asking mercy of his judge, who cannot but know that if he was in the state of the supplicant, he should desire that pardon which he now denies. The difficulty of this sophisma will vanish, if we remember that the parties are, in reality, on one side theb criminal, and on the other the community of which the magistrate is only the minister, and by which he is intrusted with the publick safety. The magistrate therefore, in pardoning a man unworthy of pardon, betrays the trust with which he is invested, gives away what is not his own, and, apparently,c does to others what he would not that others should do to him.2 Even the community, whose right is still greater to arbitrary grants of mercy, isd bound by those laws which regard the great republick of mankind, and cannot justify such forbearancee as may promote wickedness, and lessen the general confidence and security in which all have an equal interest, and which all are therefore bound to maintain. For this reason the state has notf a right to erect a general sanctuary for fugitives, or give protection to such as have forfeited their lives by crimes against the laws of common morality equally acknowledged by all nations, because no peopleg can, without infraction of the universal league of social beings, incite, by prospects of impunity and safety, those practicesh in another dominion, which they would themselves punish in their own.

One occasion of uncertainty and hesitation, in those by whom this great rule has been commented and dilated,i is the confusion of what the exacterj casuists are careful to distinguish, “debts of justice” and “debts of charity.” The immediate and primary intention of this precept, is to establish a rule of justice,k and I know not whether invention,l or sophistry, can start a single difficulty to retard its application, when it is thus expressed and explained, “let every man allowm the claim of right in another which he should think himself entitled to make in the like circumstances.”n

The discharge of the “debts of charity,” or duties which we owe to others not merely as required by justice, but as dictated by benevolence, admits in its own nature greater complication of circumstances and greater latitude of choice. Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct. But beneficence, though in general equally enjoinedo by our religion, and equally needful to the conciliation of the divine favour, is yet, for the most part, with regard to its single acts, elective and voluntary. We may certainly, without injury to our fellow-beings,p allow in the distribution of kindness something to our affections, and change the measure of our liberality according to our opinions and prospects, our hopes and fears. This rule therefore is not equally determinate and absolute with respect to offices of kindness, and acts of liberality, because liberality and kindness, absolutely determined, would lose their nature; for how could we be called tender, or charitable, for giving that which we are positively forbidden to withhold?q

Yet even in adjusting the extent of our beneficence no other measure can be taken than this precept affords us, for we can only know what others suffer or want, by considering how we should be affected in the same state; nor can we proportion our assistance by any other rule than that of doing what we should then expect from others. It indeed generally happens that the giver and receiver differ in their opinions of generosity;r the same partiality to his own interest incliness one to large expectations, and the other to sparing distributions. Perhaps the infirmity of human nature will scarcely suffer a man groaning under the pressure of distress, to judge rightly of the kindness of his friends, ort think they have done enough till his deliverance is compleated;u not therefore what we might wish,v but what we could demand from others, we are obliged to grant,w since, though we can easily know how much we might claim, it is impossible to determine what we should hope.

But in all enquiries concerning the practice of voluntary and occasional virtues, it is safest for minds not oppressed with superstitious fears to determine against their own inclinations, and secure themselves from deficiency by doingx more than they believe strictly necessary. For of this every man may be certain that, if he were to exchange conditions with his dependent, he should expect more than, with the utmost exertion of his ardour, he now will prevail upon himself to perform; and wheny reason has no settled rule, and our passions are striving to mislead us, it is surely the part of a wise man to err on the side of safety.

Ita will not be necessary to solicit your good will by any formal preface,b when I have informed you, that I have long been knownc as the most laborious and zealous virtuoso that the present age has had the honour of producing, and that inconvenienciesd have been brought upon me by an unextinguishable ardour of curiosity, and an unshaken perseverance in the acquisition ofe the productions of art and nature.

It was observed, from my entrance into the world, that I had something uncommon in my disposition, and thatf there appeared in me very early tokens of superior genius.g I was always an enemy to trifles; the play-things which my mother bestowed upon me I immediately broke that I might discover the method of their structure, and the causes of their motions; of all the toys with which children are delighted I valued only my coral, and as soon as I could speak, asked, like Peiresc,2 innumerable questions which the maids about me could not resolve.h As I grew older I was more thoughtful and serious, and instead of amusing myself with puerile diversions, made collections of natural rarities, and never walked into the fields without bringing home stones of remarkable forms, or insects of some uncommon species. I never entered an old house, from which I did not take away thei painted glass, and often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.

Being thus early possessed by a taste for solid knowledge, I passed my youth with very little disturbance from passions and appetites, and having no pleasure in the company of boys and girls, who talked of plays, politicks, fashions, or love, I carried on my enquiries with incessant diligence, and had amassed more stones, mosses, and shells, than are to be found in many celebrated collections, at an age in which the greatest part of young men are studying under tutors, or endeavouring to recommend themselves to notice by their dress, their air, and their levities.

When I was two and twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father, possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of money in the public funds, and must confess that I did not much lament him, for he was a man of mean parts, bent rather upon growing rich than wise. Hej once fretted at the expence of only ten shillings, which he happened to overhear me offering for the sting of a hornet, though it was a cold moist summer, in which very few hornets had been seen. He often recommended to me the study of physick, in which, said he, you may at once gratify your curiosity after natural history, and encrease your fortune by benefiting mankind. I heard him, Mr. Rambler, with pity, and as there was no prospect of elevating a mind formed to grovel, suffered him to please himself with hoping that I should sometime follow his advice. For you know that there are men, with whom, when they have once settled a notion in their heads, it is to very little purpose to dispute.

Being now left wholly to my own inclinations, I very soon enlarged the bounds of my curiosity, and contented myself no longer with such rarities as required only judgment and industry, and when once found, might be had for nothing. I now turned my thoughts to Exoticks and Antiques, and became so well known for my generous patronage of ingenious men, that my levee was crowded with visitants, some to see my museum, and others to encrease its treasures, by selling me whatever they had brought from other countries.

I had always a contempt ofk that narrowness of conception, which contents itself with cultivating some single corner of the field of science; I took the whole region into my view, and wished it of yet greater extent. But no man's power can be equal to his will. I was forced to proceed by slow degrees, and to purchase what chance or kindness happened to present. I did not, however, proceed without some design, or imitate the indiscretion of those, who begin a thousand collections, and finish none. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the maps drawnl in the rude and barbarous times, before any regular surveys, or just observations; and have, at a great expence, brought together a volume, in which, perhaps, not a single country is laid down according to its true situation, and bym which, he that desires to know the errors of the antient geographers may be amply informed.n

But my ruling passion is patriotism: my chief care has been to procureo the products of our own country; andp as Alfred received the tribute of the Welch in wolves'q heads, I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained, by this easy method, most of the grubs and insects, which land, air, or water can supply. I have three species of earthworms not known to the naturalists, have discovered a new ephemera, and can shew four wasps that were taken torpid in their winter quarters. I have, from my own ground, the longest blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half year's rent for a field of wheat, an ear containing more grains than hadr been seen before upon a single stem.

One of my tenants so much neglected his own interest, as to supply me, in a whole summer, with only two horse-flies, and those of little more than the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only forgiven, but rewarded.

These, however, were petty acquisitions, and made at small expence; nor should I have ventured to rank myself among the virtuosi without better claims.s I have suffered nothing worthy the regard of a wise man to escape my notice: I have ransacked the old and the new world, and been equally attentive to past ages and the present. For the illustration of antient history, I can shew a marble, of which the inscription, though it is not now legible, appears from some broken remains of the letters, to have been Tuscan, and therefore probably engraved before the foundation of Rome. I have two pieces of porphyry found among the ruins of Ephesus, and three letters broken off by a learned traveller from the monumentst at Persepolis; a piece of stone which pavedu the Areopagus of Athens, and a plate without figures or characters,v which was found at Corinth, and which I therefore believe to be that metal which was oncew valued before gold. I have sand gathered out of the Granicus; a fragment of Trajan's bridge over the Danube; some of the mortar which cemented the water-course of Tarquin; a horse shoe brokenx on the Flaminian way; and a turf with five daisies dug from the field of Pharsalia.

I do not wish toy raise the envy of unsuccessful collectors, by too pompous a display of my scientifick wealth, but cannot forbear to observe, that there are few regions of the globe which are not honoured with some memorial in my cabinets. The Persian monarchs are said to have boasted the greatness of their empire, by being served at their tables with drinkz from the Ganges and the Danube:3 I can shew one vial, of which the water was formerly an icicle on the crags of Caucasus, and another that contains what once wasa snow on the top of Atlas;b in a third is dew brushed from a banana in the gardens of Ispahan;c and, in another, brine that hasd rolled in the Pacific Ocean. I flatter myself that I am writing to a man who will rejoice at the honour which my labours have procured to my country, and therefore, I shall tell you that Britain can by my care boast of a snail that has crawled upon the wall of China; a humming bird which an American princess wore in her ear; the tooth of an elephant who carried the queen of Siam; the skin of an ape that was kept in the palace of the great mogul; a ribbon that adorned one of the maids of a Turkish sultana; and a symeter once wielded bye a soldier of Abas the Great.

In collecting antiquities of every country, I have been careful to chuse only by intrinsick worth, and real usefulness, withoutf regard to party or opinions. I have therefore a lock of Cromwell's hair in a box turned from a piece of the Royal Oak; and keep, in the same drawers, sand scraped from the coffin of King Richard, and a commission signed by Henry the Seventh.g I have equal veneration for the ruff of Elizabeth and the shoe of Mary of Scotland; and should lose, with like regret, a tobacco-pipe of Raleigh, and a stirrup of King James. I have paid the same price for a glove of Lewis, and a thimble of Queen Mary; for a fur cap of the Czar, and a boot of Charles of Sweden.

You will easily imagine that these accumulations were not made without some diminution of my fortune, for I was so well known to spare no cost, that at every sale some bid against me for hire, some for sport, and some for malice; and if I asked the price of any thing it was sufficient to double the demand. For curiosity, trafficking thus with avarice, the wealth of India had not been enough; and I, by little and little, transferred all my money from the funds to my closet: here I was inclined to stop, and live upon my estate in literary leisure, but the sale of the Harleian collection shook my resolution: I mortgaged my land, and purchased thirty medals, which I could never find before. I have at length bought till I can buy no longer, and the cruelty of my creditors has seized my respository; I am therefore condemned to disperse what the labour of an age will not reassemble.h I submit to that which cannot be opposed, and shall, in a short time, declare a sale. I have, while it is yet in my power, sent you a pebble, pick'd up by Tavernier on the banks of the Ganges;4 for which I desire no other recompence than that you will recommend my catalogue to the public.

Learning confers so much superiority on those who possess it, that they might probably have escaped all censure, had they been able to agree among themselves: but as envy and competition have divided the republick of letters into factions, they have neglected the common interest; each has called in foreign aid, and endeavoured to strengthen his own cause by the frown of power, the hiss of ignorance, and the clamour of popularity. They have all engaged in feuds, tille by mutual hostilities theyf demolished those outworksg which veneration had raised for their security, and exposed themselves to barbarians,h by whom every region of science is equally laid waste.

Betweeni men of different studies and professions, may be observed aj constant reciprocation of reproaches. The collector of shells and stones, deridesk the folly of him who pastes leaves and flowers upon paper, pleases himself with colours that are perceptiblyl fading, and amasses with care what cannot be preserved. The hunter of insects stands amazed that any man can wastem his short time upon lifeless matter, while many tribes of animals yet want their history.n Every one is inclined not only to promote his own study, but to exclude all others from regard, and having heated his imagination with some favourite pursuit, wonders that the rest of mankind are not seized with the same passion.

There are, indeed, many subjects of study which seem but remotely allied to useful knowledge, ando of little importance to happiness or virtue; nor is it easy to forbear some sallies of merriment, or expressions of pity, when we see a man wrinkled with attention, and emaciated with solicitudep in the investigation of questions, of which, without visible inconvenience,q the world may expire in ignorance. Yet it is dangerous to discourage well-intended labours, orr innocent curiosity; for he who is employed in searches, which by any deduction of consequences tends to the benefit of life, is surely laudable, in comparison of those who spend their time in counteracting happiness, and filling the world with wrong and danger, confusion and remorse. Not man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitudes that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

It is impossible to determine the limits ofu enquiry, or to foresee what consequences a newv discovery may produce. He who suffers not his faculties to lie torpid, has a chance, whatever be his employment, of doing good to his fellow-creatures. The man thatw first ranged the woods in search of medicinal springs, or climbed the mountains for salutary plants, has undoubtedly merited the gratitude of posterity, how much soever his frequent miscarriages might excite the scorn of his contemporaries. If what appears little be universally despised, nothing greater can be attained, for all thatx is great was at first little, and rose to its present bulk by gradual accessions,y and accumulated labours.

Those who lay out time or moneyz in assembling matter for contemplation, are doubtlessa entitled to some degree of respect,b though in a flight of gaiety it be easy to ridicule their treasure, or in a fit of sullenness to despise it. A man who thinks only on the particular object before him, goesc not away much illuminated by having enjoyed the privilege of handling the tooth of a shark, or the paw of a white bear; yetd there is nothing more worthy of admiration to a philosophical eye, thane the structure of animals, by which they are qualified to support life in the elements or climatesf to which they are appropriated; and of all natural bodies it must be generallyg confessed, that they exhibit evidences of infinite wisdom, bear their testimony to the supreme reason, and excite in the mind new raptures of gratitude,h and new incentives to piety.

To collect the productions of art, and examples of mechanical science or manual ability, is unquestionably useful, even when the things themselves are of small importance, because it is always advantageous to know how far the human powers have proceeded, and how much experience has foundi to be within the reach of diligence. Idleness and timidity oftenj despair without being overcome, andk forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavours, by shewingl what has been already performed. Itm may sometimes happen that the greatest effortsn of ingenuity have been exerted in trifles, yet the same principles ando expedients may be applied to more valuablep purposes, and the movements which put into action machines of noq use but to raise the wonder of ignorance, may be employed to drain fens, or manufacture metals, to assist the architect, or preserve the sailor.

For the utensils, arms, or dresses of foreign nations, which make the greatest part of many collections, I have littler regard when they are valueds only because they are foreign, and can suggest no improvement of our own practice. Yet they are not all equally useless, nor can it be always safelyt determined, which should be rejected or retained; for they may sometimes unexpectedlyu contribute to the illustration of history, andv to the knowledge of the natural commodities of the country, or of the genius and customs of its inhabitants.

Rarities there are of yet aw lower rank, which owe their worthx merely to accident, and which can convey no information, nor satisfy any rational desire. Such are many fragments of antiquity, as urns and pieces of pavement; and thingsy held in veneration only for having been once the property of some eminent person, as the armour of King Henry, or for having been used on some remarkable occasion, as the lanthorn of Guy Faux.1 The loss or preservation of these seems to be a thing indifferent, nor can I perceive why the possession of them should be coveted. Yet, perhaps, even this curiosity is implanted by nature; and when I find Tully confessing of himself, that he could not forbear at Athens to visit the walks andz houses which the old philosophers had frequented or inhabited, and recollecta the reverence which every nation, civil and barbarous, has paid to the ground where merit has been buried,2 I am afraid to declare against the general voice of mankind, and am inclined to believe, that this regard, which we involuntarily pay to the meanest relique of a man great and illustrious, is intended as an incitement to labour, and an encouragement to expect the same renown, if it be sought by the same virtues.

The virtuoso therefore cannot be said to be wholly useless; butb perhaps he may be sometimesc culpable for confining himself to business below his genius, andd losing ine petty speculations, those hours by which if he had spent themf in nobler studies,g he might have given new light to the intellectual world. It ish never without grief, that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discoveredi a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expence rather than by labour, and knownj the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness, and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys andk trinkets for arguments and principles,l arguments which require circumspection and vigilance, and principlesm which cannot be obtained but by the drudgery of meditation. He will gladly shut himself up forever with his shells and medals, like the companions of Ulysses, who having tasted the fruit of Lotos, would not even by the hope of seeing their own country, be temptedn again to the dangers of the sea.

Collections of this kind are of use to the learned, as heaps of stone and piles of timber are necessary to the architect. But to dig the quarry or to search the field, requires not much of any quality, beyondr stubborn perseverance; and though genius must often lye inactive without this humble assistance, yet thiss can claim little praise because every man can afford it.

To mean understandings, it ist sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; butu different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill-suited with the capacity of Newton.

You seem in all your papers to be an enemy to tyranny,b and to look with impartiality upon the world; I shall thereforec lay my case before you,d and hope by your decision to be set free frome unreasonable restraints,f and enabled to justify myself against the accusations which spite and peevishness produce against me.

At the age of five years I lost my mother, and my father being notg qualified to superintend the education of a girl, committed me to the care of his sister,h who instructed me with the authority, and, not to deny her what she may justly claim, with the affection of a parent. She had noti very elevated sentiments or extensive views, but her principles were good, and her intentions pure; and though some may practise more virtues, scarce any commit fewer faults.

Under this good lady I learned all the common rules of decent behaviour, andj standing maxims of domestick prudence; and might have grown up by degrees to a country gentlewoman, without any thoughts of ranging beyond the neighbourhood, had not Flavia come down, last summer, to visit her relations in the next village. I was taken, of course, to compliment the stranger, and was at the first sight, surprized at the unconcern with which she saw herself gazed at by company whom she had never known before; at the carelessness with which she received compliments, and the readiness with which she returned them. I found she had something which I perceived myself to want, and could not but wish to be like her, at once easy and officious, attentive and unembarrassed. I went home, and for four days could think and talk of nothing but Miss Flavia; though my aunt told me, that she was a forward flirt, and thought herself wise before her time.

In a little time she repaid my visit, and raised in my heart a new confusion of lovek and admiration. I soon saw her again, and still found new charms in her air, conversation, and behaviour.l You who have perhaps seen the world, maym have observed, that formality soon ceases between young persons. I know notn how others are affected on such occasions, but I found myself irresistibly allured to friendship and intimacy, by the familiar complaisance and airy gaiety of Flavia; so that in a few weeks I became her favourite, and all the time was passed with me, that she could gain from ceremony and visit.o

As she came often to me, she necessarily spent some hours with my aunt, to whom she paid great respect, by low courtesies, submissive compliance, and soft acquiescence; but as I became gradually more accustomed to her manners, I discovered that her civility was general; that there was a certain degree of deference shewn by her to circumstances and appearances;p that many went away flattered by her humility, whom she despised in her heart; that the influence of far the greatest part of those with whom she conversed, ceased with their presence; and that sometimes she did not remember the names of them whom, without any intentional insincerity or false commendation, her habitual civility had sent away with very high thoughts of their own importance.q

It was not long before I perceived, that my aunt's opinion was not of much weight in Flavia's deliberations, and that she was looked upon by her as a woman of narrow sentiments, without knowledge of books, or observations on mankind. I had hitherto considered my aunt, as entitled by her wisdom and experience to the highest reverence, and could not forbear to wonder that any one so much younger should venture to suspect her of error, orr ignorance; but my surprize was without uneasiness, and being now accustomed to think Flavia always in the right, Is readily learned from her to trust my own reason,t and to believe it possible, that they who had lived longer might be mistaken.

Flavia had read much, and used so often to converse on subjects of learning, that she put all the men in the county to flight, except the old parson, who declared himself much delighted with her company, because she gave him opportunity to recollect the studies of his younger years, and by some mention of ancient story, hadu made him rub the dust off his Homer, which had lain unregarded in his closet. With Homer and a thousand other names familiar to Flavia, I had no acquaintance, but began by comparing her accomplishments with my own, to repine at my education, andv wish that I had not been so long confined to the company of those from whom nothing but housewifery was to be learned. I then set myself to peruse such books as Flavia recommended, and heard her opinion of their beauties and defects. I saw new worlds hourly bursting upon my mind, and was enraptured at the prospect of diversifying life with endless entertainment.

The old lady finding that a large screen, which I had undertaken to adorn with turkey-work against winter, made very slow advances, and that I had added in two months but three leaves to a flowered apron then in the frame,w took the alarm, and with all the zeal of honest folly exclaimed against my new acquaintance, who had filled me with idle notions, and turned my head with books. But she had now lost her authority, for I began to find innumerable mistakes in her opinions, and improprieties in her language; and therefore thought myself no longer bound to pay much regard to one who knew little beyond her needle and her dairy, and who professedx to think that nothing more is required of a woman than to see that the house is clean, and that the maids go to bed and rise at a certain hour.

She seemed however to look upon Flavia as seducing me, and to imagine that when her influencey was withdrawn, I should return to my allegiance; shez therefore contented herself with remote hints, and gentle admonitions, intermixed with sage histories of the miscarriages of wit, and disappointments of pride. But since she has found, that tho' Flavia is departed, I still persist in my new scheme, she has at length lost her patience; she snatches my book out of my hand, tears my paper if she finds me writing, burns Flavia's letters before my face whena she can seize them, and threatens to lock me up, and to complain to my father of my perverseness. If women, she says, would but know their duty and their interest, they would be careful to acquaint themselves with family-affairs, and many a penny might be saved; for while the mistress of the house is scribblingb and reading, servants are junketing,c and linnend is wearing out. She then takes me round the rooms, shews me the worked hangings, and chairs of tent-stitch, and asks whether all this was done with a pen and a book.

I cannot deny that I sometimes laugh, and sometimes am sullen, but she has not delicacy enough to be much moved either with my mirth or my gloom, if she did not think the interest of the family endangered by this change of my manners. She had for some years marked out young Mr. Surly, an heir in the neighbourhood, remarkable for his love of fighting-cocks, as an advantageous match; and was extremely pleased with the civilities which he used to pay me, till under Flavia's tuition I learned to talk of subjects which he could not understand. This, she says, is the consequence of female study; girls grow too wise to be advised, and too stubborn to be commanded; but she is resolved to try who shall govern, and will thwart my humour till she breaks my spirit.

These menaces, Mr. Rambler, sometimes make me quite angry; for I have been sixteen these ten weeks, and think myself exempted from the dominion of a governess, who has no pretensions to more sense or knowledge than myself. I am resolved, since I am as tall and as wise as other women, to be no longer treated like a girl. Miss Flavia has often told me, that ladies of my age go to assemblies and routs, without their mothers and their aunts; I shall therefore, from this time, leave asking advice, and refuse to give accounts. I wish you woulde state the time at which young ladies may judge for themselves, which I am sure you cannot but think ought to begin before sixteen; if you are inclined to delay it longer, I shall have veryf little regard to yourg opinion.

My aunt often tells me of the advantages of experience, and of the deference due to seniority; and both she and all the antiquated part of the world talk of the unreserved obedience which they paid to the commands of their parents, and the undoubting confidence with which they listened to their precepts; of the terrors which they felt at a frown, and the humility with which they supplicated forgiveness whenever they had offended. I cannot but fancy that this boast is too general to be true, and that the young and the old were always at variance. I have, however, told my aunt that I will mend whatever she will prove to be wrong; but she replies that she has reasons of her own, and that she is sorry to live in an age when girls have the impudence to ask for proofs.

I beg once again, Mr. Rambler, to know whether I am not as wise as my aunt, and whether, when she presumes to check me as a baby, I may not pluck up a spirit and return her insolence. I shall not proceed to extremities without your advice, which is therefore impatiently expected by

The necessity of action is not only demonstrable from the fabrick of the body, but evident from observation off the universal practice of mankind, who for the preservation of health, in those whose rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labour, have invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the world with manual trades, yet of equal fatigue to those that practise them, and differing only from the drudgery of the husbandman or manufacturer, as they areg acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful sense of compulsion. The huntsman rises early, persues his game through all the dangers and obstructions of the chase, swims rivers, and scales precipices, till he returnsh home no less harrassed than the soldier, and has, perhaps, sometimes incurred as greati hazard of wounds or death: Yet he has no motive to incite his ardour; he is neither subject to the commands of a general, nor dreads any penalties forj neglect and disobedience; he has neitherk profit or honour to expect from his perils and his conquests, butl toils without the hopem of mural or civick garlands, and must content himself with the praise of his tenants andn companions.

But sucho is the constitution of man, that labour may bep stiled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much miseryq escaped by frequent and violent agitation of the body.

Ease is the utmost that can be hoped from a sedentary and unactive habit; ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure. The dance of spirits, the bound of vigour,r readiness of enterprize, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him that braces his nerves, and hardens his fibres, that keeps his limbs pliant with motion, and by frequent exposure fortifies his frame against the common accidents of cold and heat.

With ease, however, if it could be secured, many would be content; but nothing terrestrial can be kept at a stand. Ease, if it is not rising into pleasure, will be falling towards pain; and whatever hope the dreams of speculation may suggest of observing the proportion between nutriment and labour, and keeping the body in a healthy state by supplies exactly equal to its waste, we know that, in effect, the vital powers unexcited by motion, grow gradually languid; that as their vigour fails, obstructions are generated; and that from obstructions proceed most of those pains whichs wear us away slowly with periodical tortures, and which,t though they sometimes suffer life to be long, condemn it to be useless,u chain us down tov the couch of misery, and mock us with the hopes of death.

Exercisew cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, andx give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death indeed falls from heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct; to diey is the fate of man, but to diez with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

It isa necessary to that perfection of which our present state is capable, that the mind and body should both be kept in action; that neither the faculties of the one nor of the other be suffered to grow lax or torpid for want of use; that neither health be purchased by voluntary submission to ignorance, nor knowledge cultivated at the expence of that health, which must enable it either to give pleasure to its possessor or assistance to others. It is too frequently the pride of students to despise those amusements and recreations which give to the rest of mankind strength of limbs and cheerfulness of heart. Solitude and contemplation are indeed seldom consistent with such skill in common exercises or sports as is necessary to make them practised with delight, and no man is willing to do that of which the necessity is not pressing and immediate, when he knows that his aukwardness must make him ridiculous.

Thus the man of learning is often resigned, almost by his own consent, to languor andb pain; and while in the prosecution of his studies he suffers the weariness of labour, is subject by his course of life to the maladies of idleness.

It was, perhaps, from the observation of this mischievousc omission in those who are employed about intellectual objects, that Locke has, in his System of Education,d urged the necessity of ae trade to men of all ranks and professions, that when the mind is weary with its proper task,f it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation;2 and thatg while the vital functions are resuscitated and awakened by vigorous motion, the understanding may be restrainedh from that vagrance and dissipation by which iti relieves itself after a long intenseness of thought, unless some allurement be presented that may engage applicationj without anxiety.

There is so little reason for expectingk frequent conformity to Locke's precept, that it is not necessary to enquire whether the practice of mechanicall arts might not give occasion to petty emulation, and degeneratem ambition; and whether, if our divines and physicians were taught the lathe and the chizzel, they wouldn not think more of their tools than their books; as Nero neglected the care of his empire for his chariot and his fiddle. It is certainly dangerous to be too much pleased with little things; but what is there which may not be perverted? Let uso remember how much worse employment might have been found for those hours, which a manual occupation appears to engross;3 let us compute the profit with the loss, and when we reflect how often a genius is allured from his studies, consider likewisep that perhaps by the same attractions he is sometimes withheld from debauchery, orq recalled from malice, from ambition, from envy, and from lust.

I have always admired the wisdom of those by whom our female education was instituted, for having contrived, that every woman of whatever condition should be taught some arts of manufacture, by which the vacuities of recluse and domestick leisure mayr be filled up. These arts are more necessary ass the weakness of their sex and the general system of life debar ladiest from many employments which by diversifying the circumstances of men, preserve them from being cankered by the rust of their own thoughts. I know not how much of the virtue and happiness of the world may be the consequence of this judicious regulation. Perhaps, the most powerful fancy might be unable to figure the confusion and slaughter that would be produced by so many piercing eyes and vivid understandings, turned loose at once upon mankind, with no other business than to sparkle and intrigue, to perplex and to destroy.

For my part, whenever chance brings within my observation a knot of misses busy at their needles, I consider myself as in the school of virtue; and though I have no extraordinary skill in plain worku or embroidery, look upon their operations withv as much satisfaction as their governess, because I regard them as providing a security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling themselves to exclude idleness from their solitary moments, and with idleness her attendant train of passions, fancies, and chimeras, fears, sorrows and desires. Ovid and Cervantes will inform themw that love has no power but over those whom he catches unemployed; and Hector, in the Iliad, when he sees Andromache overwhelmed with terrors, sends her for consolation to the loom and the distaff.4

It is certain that any wild wish or vain imagination never takes such firm possession of the mind, as when it is found empty and unoccupied. Thex old peripatetick principle, that “Nature abhors a Vacuum,” may be properly applied to the intellect, whichy will embrace any thing, however absurd or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object. Perhaps every man may date the predominance of those desires that disturb his life and contaminate his conscience, from some unhappy hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for he has lived with little observation either on himself or others, who does not know that to be idle is to be vicious.

He that succeeds a celebrated writer, has the same difficulties to encounter; he stands under the shade of exalted merit, and is hindered from rising to his natural height, by the interception of those beams which should invigorate and quicken him. He applies to that attention which is already engaged, and unwilling to be drawn off from certain satisfaction; or perhaps to an attention already wearied, and not to be recalled to the same object. One of the old poetsd congratulates himself that he has the untrodden regions of Parnassus before him, and that his garland will be gathered from plantationse which no writer had yet culled.2 But the imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only hope to find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence. The Macedonian conqueror, when he was once invited to hear a man that sung like a nightingale, replied with contempt, “that he had heard the nightingale herself”;3 and the same treatment must every man expect, whose praise is, that he imitates another.

Yet, in the midst of these discouraging reflexions, I am about to offer to my reader some observations upon Paradise Lost, and hope, that, however I may fall below the illustrious writer whof hasg so long dictated to the commonwealth of learning, my attempt may not be wholly useless. There are in every age, new errors to be rectify'd, and new prejudices to be opposed. False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.

Addison, though he has considered this poem under most of the general topicks of criticism, has barely touched upon the versification; not probably because he thought the art of numbers unworthy of his notice, for he knew with how minute attention the ancient criticks considered the disposition of syllables, and had himself given hopes of some metrical observations upon theh great Roman poet; buti being the first who undertook to display the beauties, and point out the defects of Milton, he had many objects at once before him, and passed willingly over those which were most barren of ideas, and required labour, rather than genius.4

Yet versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensablyj necessary to a poet. Every other power by which thek understanding isl enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose. But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the faculty of joining musick with reason, and of acting at once upon the senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melody,m and who will not confess that they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order, than in another. The perception of harmony is indeed conferred upon men in degrees very unequal, but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight.

In treating on the versification of Milton I am desirous to be generally understood, and shall therefore studiously decline the dialect of grammarians; though, indeed, it is always difficult and sometimes scarcely possible to deliver the precepts of an art without the terms by which the peculiar ideas of that art are expressed, and which had not been invented but because the language already in use, was insufficient. If therefore I shall sometimes seemn obscure, may it be imputed to this voluntary interdiction, and too a desire of avoiding that offence which is always given by unusual words.

The heroic measure of the English language may be properly considered as pure or mixed. It is pure when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the whole line.

The repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable, and should therefore be exactly keptp in distichs, and generally in the last line of a paragraph, that the ear may rest without any sense of imperfection.

But, to preserve the series of sounds untransposedq in a long composition, is not only very difficult but tiresome and disgusting; for we are soon wearied with the perpetual recurrence of the same cadence.r Necessity has therefore enforced the mixed measure, in which some variation of the accents is allowed; this, tho' it always injures the harmony of the line considered by itself, yet compensates the loss by relieving us from the continual tyranny of the same sound, and makes us more sensible of the harmony of the pure measure.

Of these mixed numbers every poet affords us innumerable instances, and Milton seldom has two pure lines together, as will appear if any of his paragraphs be read with attention merely to the musick.s

In this passage it will be at first observed, that all the lines are not equally harmonious, and upon a nearer examination it will be found that only the fifth and ninth lines are regular, andv the rest are more or less licentious with respect to the accent. In some the accent is equally upon two syllables together, and in both strong. As

In others the accent is equally upon two syllables, but upon both weak.

But, excepting inw the first pair of syllables, which may be considered as arbitrary, a poet who, not having the invention or knowledge of Milton, has more need to allure his audience by musical cadences, should seldom suffer more than one aberration from the rule in any single verse.

There are two lines in this passage more remarkably unharmonious.

This perverse neglect of the most salutary precepts, and stubborn resistance of the most pathetic persuasion, is usually imputed to him by whom the counsel is received, and web often hear it mentionedc as a sign of hopelessd depravity, that though good advice was given, it has wrought no reformation.

Others who imagine themselves to have quicker sagacity and deeper penetration, have found out, that the inefficacy of advice is usually the fault of the counsellor, and rules havee been laid down, by which this important duty may be successfully performed: We are directed by what tokens to discover the favourable moment at which the heart is disposed for the operation of truth and reason, with what address to administer and with what vehicles to disguise “the catharticks of the soul.”1

But, notwithstanding this specious expedient, we find the world yet in the same state; advice is still given, butf still received with disgust; nor has it appeared that the bitterness of the medicine has been yetg abated, or its power encreased by any methods of preparing it.

If we consider the manner in whichh those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking,i it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zealous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? Aj few general maxims, enforced with vehemence and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference, and immediate application.k

It is not often that any man can have so muchl knowledge of another, asm is necessary to make instruction useful. We are sometimes not ourselves conscious of the original motives of our actions, and when we know them, our first care is to hide them from the sight of others, and often from those most diligently, whose superiority either of power or understanding may intitle them to inspect our lives;n it is therefore very probable that he who endeavours the cure of our intellectual maladies, mistakes their cause; and that his prescriptions avail nothing, because he knows not which of the passions or desires is vitiated.

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reasono every one is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous, is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or the faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate enquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expence, and assumesq authority over us without our permission; forr many would contentedlys suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

It is, indeed, seldom found that any advantages are enjoyed with that moderation which the uncertainty of all human good so powerfully enforces; and therefore the adviser may justly suspect, that he has inflamed the opposition which he laments by arrogance and superciliousness. He may suspect, but needs not hastily to condemn himself, for he can rarely be certain, that the softest language or most humble diffidence would have escaped resentment; since scarcelyt any degree of circumspection canu prevent or obviate thev rage with which the slothful, the impotent, and the unsuccessful, vent their discontent upon those that excel them.w Modesty itself, if it is praised, will be envied; and there are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompence is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

The number of those whom the love of themselves has thus far corrupted, is perhaps not great; but there are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence; and few to whom it is not unpleasing to receive documents, however tenderly and cautiously delivered, orx who are not willing to raise themselves from pupillage, by disputing the propositions of their teacher.

It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Arragon, that “dead counsellors are safest.”2 The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information that we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, or ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive; because they are heard with patience and with reverence. We are not unwilling to believe that man wiser than ourselves, from whose abilities we may receive advantage, without any danger of rivalry or opposition, and who affords us the light of his experience, without hurting our eyes by flashes of insolence.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulancey and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality,z but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

We see that volumesa may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of virtue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass their lives among books, very few read to be madeb wiser or better, apply any general reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by axiomsc of justice. They purpose either to consume those hours for which they can find no other amusement; to gain or preserve that respect which learning hasd always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge, which, like treasures buried and forgotten,e is of no use to others or themselves.

“The preacher, (says a French author) may spend an hour in explaining and enforcing a precept of religion, without feeling any impression fromf his own performance, because he may have no further designg than to fill up his hour.”3 A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion;h he may be learning not to live, but to reason; he may regardi only the elegance of stile, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and mayj enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtilty, while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

But though truth and virtue are thus frequently defeated by pride, obstinacy, or folly, we are not allowed to desert them; for whoever can furnishk arms which they have not hitherto employed, may enable them to gain some hearts which would have resisted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has some arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration. To the position of Tully, that if Virtue could be seen, she must be loved, may be added, that if Truth could be heard, she must be obeyed.4

Confirmed and animated by this illustrious precedent, I shall continue my inquiries into Milton's art of versification. Since, however minutee the employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passion.

That verse may be melodious and pleasing, it is necessary, not only that the wordsf be so ranged as that the accent may fall on its proper place, but that the syllables themselves be so chosen as to flow smoothly into one another. This is to be effected by a proportionate mixture of vowels and consonants, and by tempering the mute consonants with liquids and semivowels. The Hebrew grammarians have observ'd, that it is impossible to pronounce two consonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without some emission of the breathg between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the sounds of the consonants are less harmonically conjoined, and, by consequence, the flow of the verse is longer interrupted.

It is pronounced by Dryden, that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh.3 This, with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables being of Teutonic original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin, and end with consonants, as,h

The difference of harmony arising principally from thei collocation of vowels and consonants, will be sufficiently conceived by attending to the following passages.

The same comparison that I propose to be made between the fourth and sixth verses of this passage, may be repeated between the last lines of the following quotations.

Milton, whose ear had been accustomed, not only to the musick of the antient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the softness of the Italian, the most mellifluous of all modern poetry, seems fully convinced of the unfitness of our language for smooth versification, and is therefore pleased with an opportunity of calling in a softer word to his assistance; for this reason, and I believe for this only, he sometimes indulges himself in a long series of proper names, and introduces them where they add little but musick to his poem.

He has, indeed, been more attentive to his syllables than to his accents, and does not often offend by collisions of consonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at least not more often than other writers who have had less important or complicated subjects to take off their care from the cadence of their lines.

The great peculiarity of Milton's versification, compared with that of later poets, isk the elision of one vowel before another, or the suppression of the last syllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. As

This licence, though now disusedl in English poetry, was practised by our old writers, and ism allowed in many other languages antient and modern, and therefore the critics on Paradise Lost have, without much deliberation, commended Milton for continuingn it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. Weo have already tried and rejected the hexameter of the antients, the double close of the Italians, and the alexandrine of the French; andp the elision of vowels, however graceful it may seemq to other nations, may be very unsuitabler to the genius of the English tongue.

There iss reason to believe that we have negligently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent e which our ancestors added to most of our monosyllables, was once vocal. Byt this detruncation of our syllables, our language is overstockedu with consonants, and it is more necessary to add vowels to the beginning of words, than to cut them off from the end.

Milton therefore seems to have somewhat mistaken the nature of our language, of which the chief defect is ruggedness and asperity, and has left our harsh cadences yet harsher. But his elisions are not all equally to be censured; in some syllables they may be allowed, and perhaps in a fewv may be safely imitated. The abscisionw of a vowel is undoubtedly vicious when it is strongly sounded, and makes, with its associate consonant, a full and audible syllable.

I believe every reader will agree that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the music is injured, and in some the meaning obscured. There are other lines in which the vowel is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed.

Yet even these contractions encrease the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered,y it never can be faulty to forbear them.

Milton frequently uses in his poems the hypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables.

Verses of this kind occur almost in every page; but though they are not unpleasing or dissonant, they ought not to be admitted into heroic poetry, since the narrow limits of our language allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic measures, than is afforded by the liberty of changing at will the terminations of the dramatic lines, and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical rigour nearer to prose.

It is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to its stated task, into sudden excursions. Severe and connected attention is preserved but for a short time, and when a man shuts himself up in his closet, and bends his thoughts to the discussion of any abstruse question, he will find his faculties continually stealing away to more pleasing entertainments. He often perceivesd himself transported, he knows not how, to distant tracts of thought, and return to his first object as from a dream, without knowing when he forsook it, or how long he has been abstracted from it.

It has been observed that the most studious are not always the most learned. There is, indeed, no great difficulty in discoveringe that this difference of proficiency may arise from the difference of intellectual powers, of the choice of books, or the convenience of information. But I believe it likewise frequently happens that the most recluse are not the most vigorous prosecutors of study. Many impose upon the world, and many upon themselves, byf an appearance of severe and exemplary diligence, when they, in reality, give themselves up to the luxury of fancy, please their minds with regulating the past, or planning out the future; place themselves at will in variedg situations of happiness, and slumber away their days in voluntary visions.2 In the journey of life some are left behind, because they are naturally feeble and slow; some because they miss the way, and many because they leave it by choice, and instead of pressing onward with a steady pace, delight themselves with momentary deviations, turn aside to pluck every flower, and repose in every shade.

There is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications. Other vices or follies are restrained by fear, reformed by admonition, or rejected by the conviction which the comparison of ourh conduct with that of others, may in time produce. But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being, is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach. The dreamer retires to his apartments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; new worlds rise up before him, one image is followedi by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity,j tho' not with the knowledge, of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advancement of some favourite science. The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and, like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers, without any external symptomk of malignity.

It happens, indeed, that these hypocrites of learning are in time detected, and convinced by disgrace and disappointment of the difference between the labour of thought, and the sport of musing. But this discovery is often not made till it is too late to recover the time that has been fooled away. A thousand accidents may, indeed, awakenl drones to a more early sense of their danger and their shame. But theym who are convinced of the necessity of breaking from this habitual drowsiness, too often relapse in spite of their resolution; for these ideal seducers are always near, and neither any particularity of time nor place is necessary to their influence; they invade the soul without warning, and have often charmed down resistance before their approach isn perceived or suspected.

This captivity, however, it is necessary for every man to break,o who has any desire to be wise or useful, to pass his life with the esteem of others, or to look back with satisfaction from his old age upon his earlier years. In order to regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the Stoick precept, teach his desires to fix upon external things;3 he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mindp the want of social pleasures and amicable communication.

It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion.4 But study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves. Active employment, or publick pleasure, isq generally a necessary part of this intellectual regimen, without which, though some remission may be obtained, a compleat cure will scarcely be effected.

This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue. Its slightestr attacks, therefore, should be watchfully opposed; and he that finds the frigid and narcotick infection beginning to seize him, should turn his whole attention against it, and check it at the first discovery by proper counteraction.

The greats resolution to be formed, when happiness and virtue are thus formidably invaded,t is, that no part of life be spent in a state of neutrality or indifference; but that some pleasure be found for every moment that is not devoted to labour; and that, whenever the necessary businessu of life growsv irksome or disgusting, an immediate transition be made to diversion and gaiety.5

After the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation; where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint thanw unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition thanx desire to be pleased.

There must be a time in which every man trifles; and the only choice that nature offers us, is, to trifle in company or alone. To join profit with pleasure, has been an old precept among men who have had very different conceptions of profit. All have agreed that our amusements should not terminate wholly in the present moment, but contribute more or less to future advantage.y He that amuses himself among well chosen companions, can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merriment which virtue can allow, some useful hints; nor can converse on the most familiar topicks, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thoughtless wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.

This is the time in which those friendships that give happiness or consolation, relief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries, may compel veneration and respect, but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and chearfulness which disencumbers all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom, and exalts the timorous to confidence.6 This easy gaietyz is certain to please, whatever be the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can receive no lastinga advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contributes to ourb pleasure.

Every man finds himself differently affected by the sight of fortresses of war, and palaces of pleasure; we look on the height and strength of the bulwarks with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, forc we cannot think of defence without admitting imagesd of danger; but we range delighted and jocunde through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity. Such is the difference between great and amiable characters; with protectors we are safe, with companions we are happy.

In criticising the work of Milton, there is, indeed,c opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the languors of attention; and since, in examining the variety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be necessary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well compensated by the examples, and the irksomeness of grammatical disquisitions somewhat alleviated.

Milton formed his scheme of versification by the poets of Greece and Rome, whom he proposed to himself for his models so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are indeed many inconveniencies inseparable from our heroick measured compared with that of Homer and Virgil; inconveniencies, which it is no reproach to Milton not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insuperable; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.

The hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examinede the poetical authors, very pleasing and sonorous lyrick measures are formed from the fragments of the heroick. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner but that invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae,1 some harmony will still remain, and the due proportions of sound willf always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have confined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other measures, thoughg longer than the English heroick, those who wrote after the refinements of versification venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.

Miltonh was constrained within the narrow limits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore,i into which it was to be sometimes broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes happened.

As harmony is the end of poetical measures, no part of a verse ought to be so separated from the rest as not to remain still more harmonious than prose, or to shew, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old hexameter might be easily observed, but in Englishj will very frequently be in danger of violation; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the English poet to only five pauses; it being supposed, that, when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syllables from the beginning or end of a verse.

That this rule should be universally and indispensably established, perhaps cannot be granted; something may be allowed to variety, and something to the adaptation of the numbers to the subject; but it will be found generally necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer by its neglect.

Thus when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its harmony; if disjoined, it must stand alone and withk regard to musick, be superfluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to another.

When two syllables likewise are abscinded from the rest, they evidently want some associate sounds to make them harmonious.

The same defect is perceived in the following lines,l where the pause is at the second syllable from the beginning.

When the pause fallsm upon the third syllable or the seventh, the harmony is better preserved; but as the third and seventh are weak syllables, the period leaves the ear unsatisfied, and in expectation of the remaining part of the verse.

It may be, I think, established as a rule,n that a pause which concludes a period should be made for the most part upono a strong syllable, as the fourth and sixth; butp those pauses which only suspend the sense may be placed upon the weaker. Thus the restq in the third line of the firstr passage satisfies the ear better than in the fourth, and the close of the second quotation better than of the third.s

The rest in the fifth placeu has the same inconvenience as inv the seventh and third, that the syllable is weak.

The noblest and most majestic pauses which our versification admits, are upon the fourth and sixth syllables, which are both strongly sounded in a pure and regular verse, and at either of which the linew is so divided,x that both members participate of harmony.

But far above all others, if I can give any credit to my own ear, is the rest upon the sixth syllable, which taking in a complete compass of sound, such as is sufficient to constitute one of our lyrick measures, makes a full and solemny close.2 Some passages which conclude at this stop, I could never read without some strong emotions of delight or admiration.

If the poetry of Milton be examined, with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into each other, it will appear, that he has performed all thata our language would admit; and the comparison of his numbers with those who have cultivated the same manner of writing, will show that he excelled as much in the lower as the higher parts of his art, and that his skill in harmony was not less than his invention or his learning.

A synod of the celestials was therefore convened, in which it was resolved, that Patronage should descend to the assistance of the Sciences. Patronage was the Daughter of Astrea, by a mortal father, and had been educated in the school of Truth, by the Goddesses, whom she was now appointed to protect. She had from her mother that dignity of aspect, which struck terror into false merit, and from her mistress that reserve, which made her only accessible to those whom the Sciences brought into her presence.

She came down, withc the general acclamation of all the powers that favour learning. Hope danced before her, and Liberality stood at her side, ready to scatter byd her direction the gifts which Fortune, who followed her, was commanded to supply. As she advanced towards Parnassus, the cloud which had long hung over it, was immediately dispelled. The shades, before withered with drought, spread their original verdure, and the flowers that had languished with chilnesse brightened their colours, and invigorated their scents; the Muses tuned their harps and exerted their voices; and all the concert of nature welcomed her arrival.

On Parnassus she fixed her residence, in a palace raised by the Sciences, and adorned with whatever could delight the eye, elevate the imagination, or enlarge the understanding. Here she dispersed the gifts of Fortune, with the impartiality of Justice, and the discernment of Truth. Her gate stood always open, and Hope sat at the portal, inviting to entrance all whom the Sciences numbered in their train. The court was therefore thronged with innumerable multitudes, of whom, though many returned disappointed, seldom any had confidence to complain; for Patronage wasf known to neglect few, but for want of the due claimsg to her regard. Those, therefore, who had solicited her favour without success, generally withdrew from publick notice, and either diverted their attention to meaner employments, or endeavoured to supply their deficiencies by closer application.

In time, however, the number of those who had miscarried in their pretensions grewh so great, that they becamei less ashamed of their repulses; and instead of hiding their disgrace inj retirement, began to besiege the gates of the palace, and obstruct the entrance of such as they thought likely to be more caressed.k The decisions of Patronage, who was but half a Goddess, had been sometimes erroneous; and though she always made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few instances of her fallibility encouraged every one to appeal from her judgment to his own and that of his companions, who were always ready to clamour in the common cause, and elate each other with reciprocal applause.

Hope was a steady friend to the disappointed, and Impudence incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claiml again before Patronage. They were again, for the most part, sent back with ignominy, but found Hope not alienated, and Impudence more resolutely zealous; they, therefore, contrived new expedients, and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes which were always encreasing, and their perseverance which Hope and Impudence forbadm them to relax.

Patronage having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degenerate towards terrestrial nature, andn forget the precepts of Justice and Truth. Insteado of confining her friendship to the Sciences, shep suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with Pride, the son of Falshood,q by whose embraces she had two daughters, Flattery and Caprice. Flattery was nursed by Liberality, and Caprice by Fortune, without any assistance from the lessons of the Sciences.

Patronage began openlyr to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinion she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of Truth; and, as her daughters continually gained upon her affections, the Sciences lost their influence, tills none found much reason to boast of their reception, but those whom Caprice or Flattery conducted to her throne.

The throngs who had so long waited, and so often been dismissed for want of recommendation from the Sciences, were delighted to see the power of thoset rigorous Goddessesu tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. Hope smiled at the approach of Caprice, and Impudence was always at hand to introduce her clients to Flattery.

Patronage had now learned to procure herself reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and instead of admitting her petitioners to an immediate audience, ordered the antechamberv to be erected, called among mortals, the Hall of Expectation. Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom Impudence had consigned to Flattery, and it was therefore crouded with a promiscuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the utmost eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.

They entered this general receptacle with ardour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy access,w under the conduct of Flattery, to the presence of Patronage. But it generally happened that they were here left to their destiny, for the inner doors were committed tox Caprice, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection,y delivered up to the sport of Suspicion, who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of Envy, who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their competitors. Infamy flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; Refutationz followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishesa with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stainsb more visible; nor were the spots of Infamy ever effaced, but withc limpid water effused by the hand of Time from a well which sprung up beneath the throned of Truth.

It frequently happened that Science, unwilling to lose the antient prerogative of recommending to Patronage, would lead her followers into the Hall of Expectation; but they were soon discouraged from attending, for not only Envy and Suspicion incessantly tormented them, but Impudence considered them as intruders, and incited Infamy to blacken them.

They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could scarcelye wash away, andf which shewed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

The rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which Caprice should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of Patronage and Pride, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

Some were indeed admitted by Caprice, when they least expected it, and heaped by Patronage with the gifts of Fortune, but they were from that time chained to her foot-stool, and condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery, however servile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, seized on a sudden by Caprice, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

Here they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years,g courting the smile of Caprice byh the arts of Flattery; till at length new crouds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of Disease, and Shame, and Poverty, and Despair, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, ofi joys and sorrows, ofj hopes and disappointments.

The Sciences, after a thousand indignities,k retired from the palace of Patronage, and having long wandered over the world in grief and distress, were led at last to the cottage of Independance, the daughter of Fortitude; where they were taught by Prudence and Parsimony to support themselves in dignity and quiet.

To trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life ofd Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases, apparent that this quality is merelye relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful, because they have something which we agree,f for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find itg in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge encreases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the booksh which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.2

It is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion intoi knowledge; and to distinguishj those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it,k and which may well be termed the enchantresses of the soul. Criticism reducesl those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and them tyranny of prescription.

There is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every studentn has innumerable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned upon this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these conformities haveo been observed by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far theyp can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they haveq been practised by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, asr “he that, of all the poets, exhibiteds the greatest variety of sound; for there are,” says he, “innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verses which describe it.”3

The critick then proceeds to shew thatu the efforts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants.

When Homerv describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds.

Many other examples Dionysius produces, but these will sufficiently shew that eitherw he was fanciful, orx we have lost the genuine pronunciation; for I know not whether in any one of these instances suchy similitude can be discovered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the veneration with which Homer was read, produced many supposititiousz beauties; for though it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses very justly corresponds with the things expressed, yet when the force of his imagination, which gave him full possession of every object, isa considered togetherb with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design.

It is not however to be doubted, that Virgil, who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured, among other excellencies, to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification. This felicity of his numbers was, at the revival of learning, displayed with great elegance by Vida, in his art of poetry.4

From the Italian gardens Popej seems to have transplanted this flower,k the growth of happier climates, into a soil less adapted to its nature, and less favourable to its increase.

From these lines laboured with great attention, and celebrated by a rival wit, may be judged what can be expected from the most diligent endeavours after this imagery of sound. The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze, mustm be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream, runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent, is, indeed, distinctly imaged, for it requires very little skill to make our language rough; butn in theseo lines, which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness, obstruction,p or delay. The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified; whyq the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the Alexandrine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word “unbending,” one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.5

These rules and these examples have taught our present criticks to enquire very studiously and minutely into sounds and cadences. It is, therefore, useful to examine with what skill they have proceeded; what discoveries they have made; and whether any rules can be established, which may guide us hereafter in such researches.

Baillet has introduced his collection of the decisions of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices which mislead the critick, and raise the passions in rebellion against the judgment.1 His catalogue, though large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? The beauties of writing have been observed to be often such as cannot in the present state of human knowledge be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demonstrations; they are therefore wholly subject to the imagination, and do not force their effects upon a mind preoccupied by unfavourable sentiments, nord overcome the counteraction of a false principle or of stubborn partiality.

To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.2 Interest and passion will hold out long against the closest siege of diagrams and syllogisms, but they are absolutely impregnable to imagery and sentiment; and will for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strainse of Virgil orf Homer, though they may give way in time to the batteries of Euclid or Archimedes.

In trusting therefore to the sentence of a critick, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fallibility to which the condition of nature has subjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsick and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or contempt.g

Many of those who have determined with great boldness, upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be justly suspected of having passed sentence, as Seneca remarks of Claudius,

Criticks, like all the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. The bigotry with which editors regard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has been generally remarked. Dryden was known to have written most of his critical dissertations only to recommend the workj upon which he then happened to be employed; and Addison is suspected to have denied the expediency ofk poetical justice, because his own Cato was condemned to perish in a good cause.3

There are prejudices which authors, not otherwise weak or corrupt, have indulged without scruple; and perhaps some of them are so complicated with our natural affections, that they cannot easily be disintangledl from the heart. Scarce any can hear with impartiality a comparison between the writersm of his own and another country; and though it cannot, I think, be charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded with this literary patriotism, yet there aren none that do not look upon theiro authors with the fondness of affinity,p and esteem them as well for the place of their birth, as for their knowledge or their wit. There is, therefore, seldom much respect due to comparative criticism, when the competitors are of different countries, unless the judge is of a nation equally indifferent to both. The Italians could not for a long time believe, that there was any learning beyond the mountains; and the French seem generally persuaded,q that there are no wits or reasonersr equal to their own. I can scarcely conceives that if Scaliger had not considered himself as allied to Virgil, by being born in the same country, he would have found his works so much superior to those of Homer, or have thought the controversy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence, and acrimony.

There is, indeed, one prejudice, and only one, by which it may be doubted whether it is any dishonour to be sometimes misguided. Criticism has so often given occasion to the envious and ill-natured of gratifying their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to recommend the virtue of candour withoutt restriction, and to preclude all futureu liberty of censure. Writers possessed with this opinion are continually enforcingv civility and decency, recommending to criticks the proper diffidence of themselves, and inculcating the veneration due to celebrated names.

I am not of opinion that these professed enemies of arrogance and severity, have much more benevolence or modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel in their own hearts,w any other intention than to distinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some are modest because they are timorous, and some are lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid.

There is indeed some tenderness due to living writers, when they attack none of those truths which are of importance to the happiness of mankind, and have committed no other offence than that of betraying their own ignorance or dulness. I should think it cruelty to crush an insect who had provoked me only by buzzing in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream of harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking this tenderness universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the publick judgment. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.

But whatever be decided concerning contemporaries, whom he that knows the treachery of the human heart, and considers how often we gratify our own pride or envy under the appearance of contending for elegance and propriety, will find himself not much inclined to disturb; there can surely be no exemptions pleaded to secure themx from criticism, who can no longer suffer by reproach, and of whom nothing now remains but their writings and their names. Upon these authors the critick is, undoubtedly, at full liberty to exercise the strictest severity, since he endangers only his own fame, and, like Æneas when he drew his sword in the infernal regions, encounters phantoms which cannot be wounded. He may indeed pay some regard to established reputation; but he can by that shew of reverence consult only his own security, for all other motives are now at an end.

The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.

It has, indeed, been advanced by Addison, as one of the characteristicks of a true critick, that he points out beauties rather than faults.4 Buty it is rather natural to a man of learning and genius, to apply himself chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties than faults to be displayed: for the duty of criticism is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate.

The general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readilya supplies him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change his measures with his subject, even without any effort of the understanding, or intervention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth necessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and reflection on gloomy situationsb and disastrous events, will sadden his numbers, as it will cloud his countenance. But in such passages there is only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application to particular images. The same flow of joyous versification will celebrate the jollityc of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaints of an absent lover, as of a conquered king.

It is scarcely to be doubted, that on many occasions we make the musick which we imagine ourselves to hear; that we modulate the poem by our own disposition, and ascribe to the numbers the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasing message in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily associate beauty and deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare that all the celebrated adaptations of harmony are chimerical; that Homer had no extraordinary attention to the melody of his verse when he described a nuptial festivity;

That Milton understood the force of sounds well adjusted, and knew the compass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted, since he was both a musician and a critick; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence,g as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellencies unworthy of his ambition; for it will not be found that he has always assigned the same cast of numbers to the same subjects. He has given in two passages very minute descriptions of angelick beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the numbers will be found upon comparison very different.

The adumbration of particular and distinct images by an exact and perceptible resemblance of sound, is sometimes studied, and sometimes casual. Every language has many words formed in imitation of the noises which they signify. Such are stridor, balo, and boatus,i in Latin; and in English to growl, to buzz, to hiss, and to jarr. Words of this kind give to a verse the proper similitude of sound, without much labour of the writer, and suchj happiness is therefore to be attributed rather to fortune than skill; yet they are sometimes combined with great propriety, and undeniablyk contribute to enforce the impression of the idea. We hear the passing arrow in this line of Virgil;

But many beauties of this kind, which the moderns, and perhaps the ancients, have observed, seem to be the product of blind reverence acting upon fancy. Dionysius himself tells us, that the sound of Homer's verses sometimes exhibits the idea of corporeal bulk:3 is not this a discovery nearly approaching to that of the blind man, who aftern long enquiry into the nature of the scarlet colour, found that it represented nothing so much as the clangor of a trumpet? The representative power of poetick harmony consists of sound and measure; of the force of the syllables singly considered, and of the time in which they are pronounced. Sound can resemble nothing but sound, and time can measure nothing but motion and duration.

The criticks, however, have struck out other similitudes; nor is there any irregularity of numbers which credulouso admiration cannot discover to be eminently beautiful. Thus the propriety of each of these lines has been celebrated by writers whose opinion the world has reason to regard,

We may, however, without giving way to enthusiasm, admit that some beauties of this kind may be produced. A sudden stop at an unusual syllable may image the cessation of action, or the pause of discourse; and Milton has very happily imitated the repetitions of an echo,

The measure or time of pronouncing may be varied so as very strongly to represent, not only the modes of external motion, but the quick or slow succession of ideas, and consequently the passions of the mind. This at least was the power of the spondaick and dactylick harmony, but our language can reach no eminent diversities of sound. We can indeed sometimes, by encumbering and retarding the line, shew the difficulty of a progress made by strong efforts and with frequent interruptions, or mark a slow and heavy motion. Thus Milton has imaged the toil of Satan struggling through chaos,

In another place, he describes the gentle glide of ebbing waters in a line remarkably rough and halting.

It is not indeed to be expected, that the sound should always assist the meaning, but it ought never to counteract it; and therefore Milton has here certainly committed a fault like that of the player, who looked on the earth when he implored the heavens, and to the heavens when he addressed the earth.

Those who are determined to find in Milton an assemblage of all the excellencies which have ennobledt all other poets, will perhaps be offended that I do not celebrate his versification in higher terms; for there are readers who discover that in this passage,

The same turn of ingenuity might perform wonders upon the description of the ark:

Milton, indeed, seems only to have regarded this species of embellishment so far as not to reject it when it came unsought; which would often happen to a mind so vigorous, employed upon a subject so various and extensive. He had, indeed, a greater and aw nobler work to perform; a single sentiment of moral orx religious truth, a single image of life or nature, would have been cheaply lost for a thousand echoes of the cadence to the sense; and he who had undertaken to “vindicate the ways of God to man,”4 might have been accused of neglecting his cause, had he lavished much of his attention upon syllables and sounds.

There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only the passions, will, if not speedily remedied, infect the reason, and, from blasting the blossomsc of knowledge, proceed in time to canker the root.

I was born in the house of discord. My parents were of unsuitable ages, contrary tempers, and different religions, and therefore employed the spirit and acuteness which nature had very liberally bestowed upon both, in hourly disputes, and incessant contrivances to detect each other in the wrong; so that from the first exertions of reason I was bred a disputant, trained up in all the arts of domestick sophistry, initiated in a thousand low stratagems, nimble shifts, and sly concealments; versed in all the turns of altercation, and acquainted with the wholed discipline of “fending” and “proving.”

Ite was necessarily my care to preserve the kindness of both the controvertists, and therefore I had very early formed the habit of suspending my judgment, of hearing arguments with indifference,f inclining as occasion required to either side, and of holding myself undetermined between them till I knew for what opinion I might conveniently declare.

Thus, Sir, I acquired very early the skill of disputation, and, as weg naturally love the arts in which we believe ourselves to excel, I did not let my abilities lie useless, nor suffer my dexterity to be lost for want of practice.h I engaged in perpetual wrangles with my school-fellows,i and was never to be convinced or repressed by any other arguments than blows, by which my antagonists commonly determined the controversy, as I was, like the Roman orator, much more eminent for eloquence than courage.

At the university I found my predominant ambition completely gratified by the study of logick. I impressedj upon my memory a thousand axioms, and ten thousand distinctions, practised every form of syllogism, passed all my days in the schools of disputation, and slept every night with Smiglecius1 on my pillow.

Youk will not doubt but such a genius was soon raised to eminence by such application: I was celebrated in my third year for the most artful opponent that the university could boast, and became the terror and the envy of all the candidates for philosophical reputation.

Myl renown, indeed, was not purchased but at the price of all my time and all my studies. I never spoke but to contradict, nor declaimed but in defence of a positionm universally acknowledged to be false, and therefore worthy, in my opinion, to be adorned with all the colours of false representation, and strengthened with all the arts of fallacious subtilty.

My father, who had no other wish than to see his son richer than himself, easily concluded that I should distinguish myself among the professors of the law; and therefore, when I hadn taken my first degree, dispatched me to the Temple with a paternal admonition, that I should never suffer myself to feel shame, for nothing but modesty could retard my fortune.

Vitiated,o ignorant, and heady as I was, I had not yet lost my reverence for virtue, and therefore could not receive such dictates without horror; but however was pleased with his determination of my course of life, because he placed me in the way that leads soonest from the prescribed walks of discipline and education, to the open fields of liberty and choice.

I was now in the place where every one catches the contagion of vanity, and soon began to distinguish myself by sophisms and paradoxes. I declared war against all received opinions and established rules, and levelled my batteries particularly against those universal principles which had stood unshaken in all the vicissitudes of literature, and arep considered as the inviolable temples of truth, or the impregnable bulwarks of science.

Iq applied myself chiefly to those parts of learning which have filled the world with doubt and perplexity, and could readily produce all the arguments relating to matter and motion, time and space, identity and infinity.

Ir was equally able and equally willing to maintain the system of Newton or Descartes, and favoured occasionally the hypothesis of Ptolomy, or that of Copernicus. I sometimes exalted vegetabless to sense, and sometimes degraded animals to mechanism.

Nor was I less inclined to weaken the credit of history, or perplex the doctrines of polity. I was always of the party which I heard the company condemn.

Amongt the zealots of liberty, I could harangue with great copiousness upon the advantages of absolute monarchy, the secresy of its counsels, andu the expedition of its measures; and oftenv celebrated the blessings produced by the extinction of parties, and preclusion of debates.

Amongw the assertors of regal authority, I never failed to declaim with republicanx warmth upon the original charter of universal liberty, the corruption of courts, and they folly of voluntary submission to those whom nature has levelled with ourselves.

Iz knewa the defects of every scheme of government, and the inconveniencies of every law. I sometimes shewed how much the condition of mankind would be improved by breaking the world into petty sovereignties, and sometimes displayed the felicity and peace which universal monarchy would diffuse over the earth.

To every acknowledged fact I found innumerable objections; for it was my rule, to judge of history only by abstracted probability,b and therefore I made no scruple of bidding defiance to testimony. I have more than once questioned the existence of Alexander the Great; and having demonstrated the folly of erecting edifices like the pyramids of Egypt, I frequently hinted my suspicion that the world had been long deceived, and that they were to be found only in the narratives of travellers.

It had been happy for me could I have confinedc my scepticism to historical controversies, and philosophical disquisitions; but having now violated my reason, and accustomed myself to enquire not after proofs, but objections, I had perplexed truth with falsehoodd till my ideas were confused, my judgment embarrassed, and my intellects distorted. The habit of considering every proposition as alike uncertain, left me no test by which any tenet could be tried; every opinion presented both sides with equal evidence, and my fallacies began to operate upon my own mind in more important enquiries. It was at last the sport of my vanity to weaken the obligations of moral duty, and efface the distinctions of good and evil, till I had deadened the sense of conviction, and abandoned my heart to the fluctuations of uncertainty, without anchor and without compass, without satisfaction of curiosity or peace of conscience; without principles of reason, or motives of action.

Such is the hazard of repressing the first perceptions of truth, of spreading for diversion the snares of sophistry, and engaging reason against its own determinations.

Thee disproportions of absurdity grow less and less visible, as we are reconciled by degrees to the deformity of a mistress; and falsehood,f by long use, is assimilatedg to the mind, as poison to the body.

I had soon the mortification of seeing my conversation courted only by the ignorant or wicked, by either boys who were enchanted by novelty, or wretches who having long disobeyed virtue and reason, were now desirous of my assistance to dethrone them.

Thush alarmed, I shuddered at my own corruption, and that pride by which I had been seduced, contributed to reclaim me. I was weary of continual irresolution, and a perpetual equipoise of the mind; and ashamed of being the favourite of those who were scorned and shunned by the rest of mankind.

Ii therefore retired from all temptations to dispute, prescribed a new regimen to my understanding, and resolved, instead of rejecting all established opinions which I could not prove, to tolerate though not adoptj all which I could not confute. I forbore to heat my imagination with needless controversies, to discuss questions confessedly uncertain, and refrained steadily from gratifying my vanity by the support of falsehood.k

Byl this method I am at length recovered from my argumental delirium, and find myself in the state of one awakenedm from the confusion and tumult of a feverish dream. I rejoice in the new possession of evidence and reality, and step on from truth to truth with confidence and quiet.

Thed bow and the horse were easily mastered, but it would have been happy if we had been informed by what arts veracity was cultivated, and by what preservatives a Persian mind was secured against the temptations to falsehood.

There are, indeed, in the present corruption of mankind,e many incitements to forsake truth; the need of palliating our own faults, and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others, so frequently occur;f so many immediate evils are to be avoided, and so many present gratifications obtained by craft and delusion, that very few of those who are much entangled in life, have spirit and constancy sufficient to support them in the steady practice of open veracity.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of falsehood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependent by interest, and the friend by tenderness: Those who are neither servile nor timorous, are yet desirous to bestow pleasure; and while unjust demands of praise continue to be made, there will always be some whom hope, fear or kindnessg will dispose to pay them.

The guilt of falsehood is very widely extended, and many whom their conscience can scarcely charge with stooping to a lye, have vitiated the morals of others by their vanity, and patronized the vice which they believe themselves to abhor.

Truth is, indeed, not often welcome for its own sake; it is generally unpleasing because contrary to our wishes and opposite to our practice; and as our attention naturally follows our interest, we hear unwillinglyh what we are afraid to know, andi soon forget what we have no inclination to impress upon our memories.

For this reason many arts of instruction have been invented, by which the reluctance against truth may be overcome; and as physick is given to children in confections, precepts have been hidden under a thousand appearances, that mankind may be bribed by pleasure to escape destruction.

While the world was yet in its infancy, Truth came among mortals from above, and Falsehood from below. Truth was the daughter of Jupiter and Wisdom; Falsehood was the progeny of Folly impregnated by the wind.2 They advanced with equal confidence to seize the dominion of the new creation, and as their enmity and their force were well known to the celestials, all the eyes of heaven were turned upon the contest.

Truth seemed conscious of superior power and juster claim, and therefore came on towering and majestick, unassisted and alone; Reason indeed always attended her, but appeared her follower, rather than companion. Her march was slow and stately, but her motion was perpetuallyj progressive, and when once she had grounded her foot, neither gods nor men could force her to retire.

Falsehoodk always endeavoured to copy the mien and attitudes of Truth, and wasl very successful in the arts of mimickry. She was surrounded, animated, and supported by innumerable legions of Appetites and Passions, but, like other feeble commanders, was obliged often to receive lawsm from her allies. Her motions were sudden, irregular, and violent; for she had no steadiness nor constancy. She often gained conquests by hasty incursions, which she never hoped to keepn by her own strength, but maintainedo by the help of the passions, whom she generally found resolute and faithful.

It sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In these encounters, Falsehood always invested her head with clouds, and commanded Fraud to place ambushes about her. In her left hand she bore the shield of Impudence, and the quiver of Sophistry rattled on her shoulder. All the passions attended at her call; Vanity clapped her wings before, and Obstinacy supported her behind. Thus guarded and assisted, she sometimes advanced against Truth, and sometimes waited the attack; but always endeavoured to skirmish at a distance, perpetually shifted her ground, and let fly her arrows in different directions; for she certainlyp found that her strength failed, whenever the eye of Truth darted full upon her.

Truthq had the awful aspect though not the thunder of her father, and whenr the long continuance of the contest brought them near to one another, Falsehood let the arms of Sophistry fall from her grasp, and, holding up the shield of Impudence with both her hands, sheltered herself amongst the Passions.

Truth,s though she wast often wounded, always recovered in a short time; but it was common for the slightest hurt, received by Falsehood, to spread its malignity to the neighbouring parts, and to burst open again when it seemed to have been cured.

Falsehood, in a short time, found by experience that her superiority consisted only in the celerity of her course, and the changes of her posture. She therefore ordered Suspicion to beat the ground before her, and avoided with great care to cross the way of Truth, who, as she never variedu her point, but moved constantlyv upon the same line, was easily escapedw by the oblique and desultoryx movements, the quick retreats and active doubles which Falsehood always practised, when the enemy began to raise terror by her approach.

By this procedure Falsehood every hour encroached upon the world, and extended her empire through all climes and regions. Wherever she carried her victories she left the Passions in full authority behind her; who were so well pleased with command, that they held out with great obstinacy when Truth came to seize their posts, and never failed to retard her progress though they could not always stop it: They yielded at last with great reluctance, frequent rallies, and sullen submission; and always inclined to revolt when Truth ceased to awe them by her immediate presence.

Truth, who, when she first descended from the heavenly palaces, expected to have been received by universal acclamation, cherished with kindness, heard with obedience, and invited to spread her influence from province to province, now found that, wherever she came, she must force her passage. Every intellecty was precluded by Prejudice, and every heart preoccupied by Passion. She indeed advanced, but she advanced slowly; and often lost the conquests which she left behind her,z by suddena insurrections of the Appetites, that shook off their allegiance, and ranged themselves again under the banner of her enemy.

Truth, however,b did not grow weaker by the struggle,c for her vigour was unconquerable; yet shed was provoked to see herself thus baffled and impeded by an enemy, whom she looked on with contempt, and who had no advantage but such as she owned to inconstancy, weakness, and artifice. She therefore, in the anger of disappointment, called upon her father Jupiter to re-establish her in the skies, and leave mankind to the disorder and misery which they deserved by submitting willingly to the usurpation of Falsehood.

Jupitere compassionated the worldf too much to grant her request, yet was willing to ease her labours and mitigate her vexation. Heg commanded her to consult the Muses by what methods she might obtain an easier reception, and reign without the toil of incessant war. It was then discovered, that she obstructed her own progress by the severity of her aspect, and the solemnity of her dictates; and that men would never willingly admit her, till they ceased to fear her, since byh giving themselves up to Falsehood they seldom made any sacrifice of their ease or pleasure, because she took the shape that was most engaging, and always suffered herself to be dressed and painted byi Desire. The Musesj wove in the loom of Pallas, a loose and changeable robe, like that in which Falsehood captivated her admirers; with this they invested Truth, and named her Fiction. She now went out again to conquer with more success; for when she demanded entrance of the Passions, they often mistook her for Falsehood, and delivered upk their charge; but when she had once taken possession, she was soon disrobed by Reason, and shone out, in her original form, with native effulgence and resistless dignity.

You have often endeavoured to impress upon your readers an observation of more truth than novelty, that life passes, for the most part, in petty transactions;1 that our hours glide away in trifling amusements and slight gratifications; and that there very seldom emerges any occasion that can call forth great virtue or great abilities.

It very commonly happens that speculation has no influence on conduct. Just conclusions, and cogent arguments, formed by laborious study, and diligent enquiry, are often reposited in the treasuries of memory, as gold in the miser's chest, useless alike to others and himself. As some are not richer for the extent of their possessions, others are not wiser for the multitude of their ideas.

Youa haveb truly described the state of human beings, but it may be doubted whether you havec accommodated your precepts to your description; whether you have not generally considered your readers as influenced by the tragick passions,d and susceptible of pain or pleasure only from powerful agents and from great events.

To an author who writes not for thee improvement of af single art, org the establishment of ah controverted doctrine,i but equally intends the advantage, and equally courts the perusal of all the classes of mankind, nothing can justly seem unworthy of regard, by which the pleasure of conversation may be increased, and the daily satisfactions of familiar lifej secured from interruption and disgust.

For this reason you would not have injured your reputation, if you had sometimes descended to the minuter duties of social beings, and enforced the observance of those little civilities and ceremonious delicacies, which, inconsiderable as they may appear to the man of science, and difficult as they may prove to be detailed with dignity,k yet contribute to the regulation of the world, by facilitating the intercourse between one man and another, and of which the French have sufficiently testified their esteem by terming the knowledge and practice of them Sçavoirl vivre, “the art of living.”

Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss. Its influence upon the manners is constant and uniform, so that, like an equal motion, it escapes perception. The circumstances of every action are so adjusted to each other, that we do not see where any error could have been committed, and rather acquiesce in its propriety, than admire its exactness.

Butm as sickness shews us the value of ease, a little familiarity with those who were never taught to endeavour the gratification of others, but regulate their behaviour merelyn by their own will, will soon evince the necessity of established modes and formalities to the happiness and quiet of common life.

Wisdomo and virtue are by no means sufficient without the supplemental laws of good-breeding to secure freedom from degenerating to rudeness,p or self-esteem from swelling into insolence;q a thousand incivilitiesr may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected, without any remorse of conscience, or reproach froms reason.

The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure. Thet power of delighting must be conferred by nature, and cannot be delivered by precept, or obtained by imitation; but though it be the privilege of a very small number to ravish and to charm, every man may hope by rules and caution not to give pain, and may, therefore, by the help of good-breeding, enjoy the kindness of mankind, though he should have no claim to higher distinctions.

The universal axiom in which all complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilised nations, is, “That no man should give any preference to himself.” A rule so comprehensive and certain, that, perhaps, it is not easy for the mind to image an incivility,u without supposing it to be broken.

There are, indeed, in every place some particular modes of the ceremonial part of good-breeding, which, beingv arbitrary and accidental, can be learned only by habitude and conversation; such are the forms of salutation, the different gradations of reverence, and all the adjustments of place and precedence. These, however,w may be often violated without offence, if it be sufficiently evident, that neither malice nor pride contributed to the failure; butx will not atone,y however rigidly observed, for the tumourz of insolence, or petulance of contempt.

I have, indeed, not found among any part of mankind, less real and rational complaisance, than among those who have passed their time in paying and receiving visits, in frequenting publick entertainments, in studying the exact measures of ceremony, and in watching all the variations of fashionable courtesy.

Theya know, indeed, at what hour they may beat the door of an acquaintance, how many steps they must attend him towards the gate, and what interval should pass before his visit is returned; butb seldom extend their care beyond the exterior and unessential parts of civility, nor refuse their own vanity any gratification, however expensive to the quiet of another.

Trypherus is a man remarkable for splendourc and expence; a man, that having been originally placed by his fortune and rank in the first class of the community, has acquired that air of dignity, and that readiness in the exchange of compliments which courts, balls and leveesd easily confer.

Bute Trypherus, without any settled purposes of malignity, partly by his ignorance of human nature, and partly by the habit of contemplating with great satisfaction his own grandeur and riches, is hourly giving disgustf to those whom chance or expectation subject to his vanity.g

Toh a man whose fortune confines him to a small house, he declaims upon the pleasure of spacious apartments, and the convenience of changing his lodging-room in different parts of the year; tells him, that he hates confinement; and concludes, that if his chamber was less, he should never wake without thinking of a prison.

Toi Eucrates, a man of birth equal to himself, but of much less estate, he shewed his services of plate, and remarked that such things were, indeed, nothing better than costly trifles, but that no man must pretend to the rank of a gentleman without them; and that for his part, if his estate was smaller,j he should not think of enjoying but encreasing it, and would enquire out ak trade for his eldest son.

Hel has, in imitation of some more acute observer than himself, collected a great many shifts and artifices by which poverty is concealed; and among the ladies of small fortune, never fails to talk of frippery and slight silks, and the convenience of a general mourning.m

In have been insulted a thousand times with a catalogue of his pictures, his jewels, and his rarities, which, though he knows the humble neatness of my habitation, he seldom fails to conclude by a declaration, that wherever he sees a house meanly furnished, he despises the owner's taste, or pities his poverty.

This, Mr. Rambler, is the practice of Trypherus, by which he is become the terror of all who are less wealthy than himself, and has raised innumerable enemies without rivalry, and without malevolence.

Yeto though all are not equally culpable with Trypherus, it is scarcely possible to find any man who does not frequently, like him, indulge his own pride by forcing others into a comparison with himself, when he knows the advantage is on his side, without considering that unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression; and that it is littlep more criminal to deprive another of some real advantage, than to interrupt that forgetfulness of its absence which is the next happiness to actual possession.

As the perpetuity and distinction of the lower tribesb of the creation require that they should be determined to proper mates by some uniform motive of choice, or some cogent principle of instinct; it is necessary likewise,c that man, whose wider capacity demands more gratifications, and who feels in himself innumerable wants, which a life of solitude cannot supply, and innumerable powers to which it cannot give employment, should be led to suitable companions by particular influence; that among manyd beings of the same nature with himself, he may select some for intimacy and tenderness, and improve the condition of his existence, by superadding friendship to humanity, and the love of individuals to that of the species.

Other animals are so formed, that they seem to contribute very little to the happiness of each other, and know neither joy, nor grief, nor love, nor hatred, but as they are urged by some desire immediately subservient either to the support of their own lives, or to the continuation of their race; they thereforee seldom appear to regard any of the minuter discriminations which distinguish creatures of the same kind from one another.

Butf if man were to feel no incentives to kindness,g more than his general tendency to congenial nature, Babylon or London, with all their multitudes, would have to him the desolation of a wilderness; his affections, not compressed into a narrower compass, would vanish like elemental fire, in boundless evaporation; he would languish in perpetual insensibility,h and though he might, perhaps, in the first vigour of youth, amuse himself with the fresh enjoyments of life, yet, when curiosity should cease, and alacrity subside, he would abandon himself to the fluctuations of chance, without expecting help against any calamity, or feeling any wish for the happiness of others.

To love all men is our duty,i so far as it includes a general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but to love all equally is impossible; at least impossible without the extinction of those passions which now produce all our pains and all our pleasures; without the disuse, if not the abolition of some of our faculties, and the suppression of all our hopes and fears in apathy and indifference.

The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate. Every man has frequentj grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

The great community of mankind is therefore, necessarily broken into smallerk independent societies; these form distinct interests, which are too frequently opposed to each other, and which they who have entered into the league of particular governments falselyl think it virtue to promote, however destructive to the happiness of the rest of the world.

Suchm unions are again separated into subordinate classes and combinations, and social life is perpetually branched out into minuter subdivisions, till it terminates in the last ramifications of private friendship.

That friendship may at once be fond and lasting, it has been already observed in these papers, that a conformity of inclinations is necessary.2 No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.

Thatn benevolence is always strongest which arises from participation of the same pleasures, since we are naturally mosto willing to revive in our minds the memory of persons,p with whom the idea of enjoyment is connected.

Itq is commonly, therefore,r to little purpose, that any one endeavours to ingratiate himself with such ass he cannot accompany in their amusements and diversions. Men have been known to rise to favour and to fortune, only by being skilfult in the sports with which their patron happened to be delighted, by concurring with his taste for some particular species of curiosities, by relishing the same wine, or applauding the same cookery.

Even those whomu wisdom orv virtue have placed above regard to such petty recommendations, must nevertheless be gained by similitude of manners. The highest and noblest enjoyment of familiar life, the communication of knowledge andw reciprocation of sentiments, must always presuppose a disposition to the same inquiry,x and delight in the same discoveries.

Withy what satisfaction could the politician lay hisz schemes for the reformation of laws, or his comparisonsa of different forms of government, before the chemist,b who has never accustomed his thoughts to any other object than salt and sulphur; or how could the astronomer,c in explaining his calculations and conjectures, endured the coldness of a grammarian, who would lose sight of Jupiter and all his satellites, for a happy etymology of an obscure word, or a better explication of a controverted line.

Every man loves merit of the same kind with his own, when it is not likely to hinder hise advancement orf his reputation; for he not only best understands the worth of those qualities which he labours to cultivate, or the usefulness of the art which he practises with success, but always feels a reflected pleasure from the praises, which, though given to another, belong equally to himself.

There is indeed no need of research and refinement to discover that men must generally select their companions from their own state of life, since there are not many minds furnished for great variety of conversation, or adapted to multiplicity of intellectual entertainments.

Theg sailor, the academick, the lawyer, the mechanick, and the courtier, have all a cast of talkh peculiar to their own fraternity, have fixed their attention upon the same events, have been engaged in affairs of the same sort, and make use of allusions and illustrations which themselves only can understand.

To be infected with the jargon of a particular profession, and to know only the language of a single rank of mortals, is indeed sufficiently despicable. But asi limits must be always set to the excursions of the human mind, there willj be some study which every man more zealously prosecutes, some darling subject on which he is principally pleased to converse; and he that can most inform or best understand him, will certainly be welcomed with particular regard.

Such partiality is not wholly to be avoided, nor is it culpable, unless suffered so far to predominate as to produce aversion from every other kind of excellence, and to shade the lustre of dissimilar virtues. Those, therefore, whom the lot of life has conjoined, should endeavour constantly to approach towards the inclination of each other, invigorate every motion of concurrent desire, and fan every spark of kindred curiosity.

Itk has been justly observed, that discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamedl to its utmost vehemence by contrariety of taste, oftener than of principles; and might therefore commonly be avoided by innocentm conformity, which, if it was not at first the motive, ought always to be the consequence of indissoluble union.

As very many well-disposed persons by the unavoidable necessity of their affairs, are so unfortunate as to be totally buried in the country, where they labour under the most deplorable ignorance of what is transacting among the polite part of mankind, I cannot help thinking, that, as a publick writer, you should take the case of these truly compassionable objects under your consideration.

These unhappy languishers in obscurity should be furnished with such accounts of the employments of people of the world, as may engage them in their several remote corners to a laudable imitation; or, at least so far inform and prepare them, that if by any joyful change of situation they should be suddenly transported into the gay scene, they may not gape, and wonder, and stare, and be utterly at a loss how to behave and make a proper appearance in it.

It is inconceivable how much the welfare of all the country towns in the kingdom might be promoted, if you would use your charitable endeavours to raise in them a noble emulation of the manners and customs of higher life.

For this purpose you should give a very clear and ample description of the whole set of polite acquirements; a compleat history of forms, fashions, frolicks, of routs, drums, hurricanes, balls, assemblies, ridottos, masquerades, auctions, plays, operas, puppet-shows, and bear-gardens; of all those delights which profitably engage the attention of the most sublime characters, and by which they have brought to such amazing perfection the whole art and mystery of passing day after day, week after week, and year after year, without the heavy assistance of any one thing that formal creatures are pleased to call useful and necessary.

In giving due instructions through what steps to attain this summit of human excellence, you may add such irresistible arguments in its favour, as must convince numbers, who in other instances do not seem to want natural understanding, of the unaccountable error of supposing they were sent into the world for any other purpose but to flutter, sport, and shine. For, after all, nothing can be clearer than that an everlasting round of diversion, and the more lively and hurrying the better, is the most important end of human life.

It is really prodigious, so much as the world is improved, that there should in these days be persons so ignorant and stupid as to think it necessary to mispend their time, and trouble their heads about any thing else than pursuing the present fancy; for what else is worth living for?

Ita is time enough surely to think of consequences when they come; and as for the antiquated notions of duty, they are not to be met with in any French novel, or any book one ever looks into, but derived almost wholly from the writings of authors, who lived a vast many ages ago, and who, as they wereb totally without any idea of those accomplishments which now characterise people of distinction, have been for some time sinking apace into utter contempt. It does not appear that even their most zealous admirers, for some partisans of his own sort every writer will have, can pretend to say they were ever at one ridotto.

In the important article of diversions, the ceremonial of visits, the extatick delight of unfriendly intimacies and unmeaning civilities, they are absolutely silent. Blunt truth, and downright honesty, plain clothes, staying at home, hard work, few words, and those unenlivened with censure or double meaning, are what they recommend as the ornaments and pleasures of life. Little oaths, polite dissimulation, tea-table scandal, delightful indolence, the glitter of finery, the triumph of precedence, the enchantments of flattery, they seem to have had no notion of, and I cannot but laugh to think what a figure they would have made in a drawing-room, and how frighted they would have looked at a gaming-table.

The noble zeal of patriotism that disdains authority, and tramples on laws for sport, was absolutely the aversion of these tame wretches.

Indeedc one cannotd discover any one thing they pretend to teach people, but to be wise, and good; acquirements infinitely below the consideration of persons of taste and spirit, who know how to spend their time to so much better purpose.

Among other admirable improvements, pray, Mr. Rambler, do not forget to enlarge on the very extensive benefit of playing at cards on Sundays, a practice of such infinite use, that we may modestly expect to see it prevail universally in all parts of thise kingdom.

Tof persons of fashion, the advantage is obvious, because as for some strange reason or other, which no fine gentleman or fine lady has yet been able to penetrate, there is neither play, nor masquerade, nor bottled conjurer,g nor any other thing worth living for, to be had on a Sunday, if it were not for the charitable assistance of whist orh bragg, the genteel part of mankind must, one day in seven, necessarily suffer a total extinction of being.

Nor are the persons of high rank the only gainers by so salutary a custom, which extends its good influence, in some degree, to the lower orders of people; but were it quite general, how much better and happier would the world be than it is even now!

'Tisi hard upon poor creatures, be they ever so mean, to deny them those enjoyments and liberties which are equally open for all. Yet if servants were taught to go to church on this day, spend some part of it in reading or receiving instruction in a family way, and the rest in mere friendly conversation, the poor wretches would infallibly take it into their heads, that they were obliged to be sober, modest, diligent, and faithful to their masters and mistresses.

Now surely no one of common prudence or humanity would wish their domesticks infected with such strange and primitive notions, or laid under such unmerciful restraints: All which may, in a great measure, be prevented by the prevalence of the good-humoured fashion that I would have you recommend. For when the lower kind of people see their betters with a truly laudable spirit, insulting and flying in the face of those rude, ill bred dictators, piety and the laws, they are thereby excited and admonished, as far as actions can admonish and excite, and taught that they too have an equal right of setting them at defiance in such instances as their particular necessities and inclinations may require; and thus is the liberty of the whole human species mightily improved and enlarged.

In short, Mr. Rambler, by a faithful representation of the numberless benefits of a modish life, you will have done your part in promoting what every body seems to confess the true purpose of human existence, perpetual dissipation.

By encouraging people to employ their whole attention on trifles, and make amusement their sole study, you will teach them how to avoid many very uneasy reflections.

Allj the soft feelingsk of humanity, the sympathies of friendship, all natural temptations to the care of a family, and solicitude about the good or ill of others, with the whole train of domestick and social affections, which create such daily anxieties and embarrasments, will be happily stifled and suppressed in a round of perpetual delights; and all serious thoughts, but particularly that of “hereafter,” be banished out of the world; a most perplexing apprehension, but luckily a most groundless one too, as it is so very clear a case, that nobody ever dies.

Having by several years of continual study treasured in my mind a great number of principles and ideas, and obtained by frequent exercise the power of applying them with propriety, and combining them with readiness, I resolved to quit the university, where I considered myself as a gem hidden in the mine, and to mingle in the croud of publicka life. I was naturally attracted by the company of those who were of the same age with myself, and finding that my academical gravity contributed very little to my reputation, applied my faculties to jocularity and burlesque. Thus, in a short time, I had heated my imagination to such a state of activity and ebullition, that upon every occasion it fumed away in bursts of wit, and evaporations of gaiety. I became on a sudden the idol of the coffee-house, was in one winter sollicited to accept the presidentship of five clubs, was dragged by violence to every new play, and quoted in every controversy upon theatrical merit; was in every publick place surrounded by a multitude of humble auditors, who retailed in other places of resort my maxims and my jests, and was boasted as their intimate and companion by many, who had no other pretensions to my acquaintance, than that they had drank chocolate in the same room.

You will not wonder, Mr. Rambler, that I mention my success with some appearance of triumph and elevation. Perhaps no kind of superiority is more flattering or alluring than that which is conferred by the powers of conversation, by extemporaneousb sprightliness of fancy, copiousness of language, and fertility of sentiment. In other exertions of genius, the greaterc part of the praise is unknown and unenjoyed; the writer, indeed, spreadsd his reputation to a widere extent, butf receives little pleasure or advantage from the diffusion of his name, and only obtains a kind of nominal sovereignty over regions which pay no tribute. The colloquial wit has always his own radiance reflected on himself, and enjoys all the pleasure which he bestows; he findsg his power confessed by every one that approaches him, sees friendship kindling with rapture, and attention swelling into praise.

The desire which every man feels of importance and esteem, is so much gratified by finding an assembly, at his entrance, brightened with gladness and hushed with expectation, that the recollection of such distinctions can scarcely fail to be pleasing whensoever it is innocent. And my conscience does not reproach me with any mean or criminal effects of vanity;h since I always employed my influence on the side of virtue, and never sacrificed my understanding or my religion to the pleasure of applause.

There were manyi whom either the desire of enjoying my pleasantry, or the pride of being thought to enjoy it, brought often into my company; but Ij was caressed in a particular manner by Demochares, a gentleman of a large estate, and a liberal disposition. My fortune beingk by no means exuberant, enclined me to be pleasedl with a friend who was willing to be entertained at his own charge.m I became by daily invitations habituated to his table, and, as he believedn my acquaintance necessary to the character of elegance, which he was desirous of establishing,o I lived in all the luxury of affluence, without expence orp dependence, and passed my life in a perpetual reciprocation of pleasure with men brought together by similitude of accomplishments, or desire of improvement.q

But all power has its spherer of activity, beyond which it produces no effect. Demochares being called by his affairs into the country, imagined that he should encrease hiss popularity by coming among his neighbours accompanied by a man whose abilities were so generally allowed. The report presently spread thro' half the county that Demochares was arrived, and had brought with him the celebrated Hilarius, byt whom such merriment would be excited,u as had never been enjoyed or conceived before. I knew, indeed, the purpose for which I was invited, and, as menv do not look diligently out for possible miscarriages,w was pleased to find myself courted upon principles of interest, and considered as capable of reconciling factions, composing feuds, and uniting a whole province in social happiness.

After a few days spent in adjusting his domestick regulations, Demochares invited all the gentlemen of his neighbourhood to dinner,x and did not forget to hint how much my presence was expected toy heighten the pleasure of the feast. He informed me what prejudices my reputation had raised in my favour, and represented the satisfaction with which he should see me kindle up the blaze of merriment, and shouldz remark the various effects that my fire would have upon such diversity of matter.

This declaration, by which he intended to quicken my vivacity, filled me with solicitude. I felt an ambition of shining, which I never knew before; and was therefore embarrassed with an unusual fear of disgrace.1 I passed the night in planning outa to myself the conversation of the coming day; recollected all my topicks of raillery, proposed proper subjects of ridicule, prepared smart replies to a thousand questions, accommodated answers to imaginary repartees,b and formed a magazine of remarks, apophthegms, tales, and illustrations.

The morning broke at last in the midst of these busy meditations. I rose withc the palpitations of a champion on the day of combat; and, notwithstanding all my efforts, found my spirits sunk under the weight of expectation. The company soon after began to drop in, and every one, at his entrance was introduced to Hilarius. What conception the inhabitants of this region had formed of a wit, I cannot yet discover; but observed thatd they all seemed, after the regular exchange of compliments, to turn away disappointed, and thate while we waited for dinner, they cast their eyes first upon me, and then upon each other, like a theatrical assembly waiting for a shew.

From the uneasiness of this situation, I was relieved by the dinner,f and as every attention was taken up by the business of the hour, I sunk quietly to a level with the rest of the company. But no sooner were the dishes removed, than instead of chearfulg confidence and familiar prattle, an universal silence again shewed their expectation of some unusual performance. My friend endeavoured to rouse them by healths and questions, but they answered him with great brevity, and immediately relapsed into their former taciturnity.

I had waited in hope of some opportunity to divert them, but could find no pass opened for a single sally; and who can be merry without an object ofh mirth? After a few faint efforts, which produced neither applause nor opposition, I was content to mingle with the mass, to put round the glass in silence, and solace myself with my own contemplations.

My friend looked round him; the guests stared at one another; and if now and then a few syllables were uttered with timidity and hesitation, there was none ready to make any reply. All our faculties were frozen, and every minute took away from our capacity of pleasing, and disposition to be pleased.2 Thus passed the hours to which so much happiness was decreed; the hours which had, by a kind of open proclamation, been devoted to wit, to mirth, and to Hilarius.

At last the night came on, and the necessity of parting freed us from the persecutions of each other. I heard them as they walked along the court murmuringi at the loss of the day, and enquiringj whether any man would pay a second visit to a house haunted by a wit.

Demochares, whose benevolence is greater than his penetration, having flattered his hopes with the secondary honour which he was to gain by my sprightliness and elegance, and the affection with which he should be followed fork a perpetual banquet of gaiety, was not able tol conceal his vexation and resentment, nor would easily be convinced, that I had notm sacrificed his interest to sullenness and caprice, hadn studiously endeavoured to disgust his guests, and suppressed my powers of delighting, in obstinate and premeditated silence.o I am informed that the reproach of their ill reception is divided by the gentlemen of the country between us; some being of opinion that my friend is deluded by an impostor, who, though he has found some art of gaining his favour, is afraid to speak before men of more penetration; and others concluding, that I think only London the proper theatre of my abilities, and disdain to exert my genius for the praise of rusticks.

I believe, Mr. Rambler, that it has sometimes happened to others, who have the good or ill fortune to be celebrated for wits, to fall under the same censures upon the like occasions. I hope therefore thatp you will prevent any misrepresentations of such failures, by remarking that invention is not wholly at the command of its possessor; that the power of pleasing is very often obstructed by the desire; that all expectation lessens surprize, yet some surprize is necessary toq gaiety; and that those who desire to partake of the pleasure of wit must contribute to its production, since the mindr stagnates without external ventilation, and thats effervescence of the fancy,t which flashes into transport, can be raised only by the infusion of dissimilar ideas.

My astonishment for a time repressed my curiosity; but soon recovering myself so far as to enquire whither we were going, and what was the cause of such clamour and confusion, I was told that wedd were launching out into the “ocean of life”;3 that we had already passed the streightse of infancy, in which multitudes had perished, some by the weakness and fragility of their vessels, and more by the folly, perverseness, or negligence, of those who undertook to steer them; and that we were now on the main sea, abandoned to the winds and billows, without any other means of security, than the care of the pilot, whom it was always in our power to choose among great numbers that offered their direction and assistance.

I then looked round with anxious eagerness; and first turning my eyes behind me, saw a stream flowing through flowery islands, which every one that sailedf along seemed to behold with pleasure; but no sooner touched, than the current, which, though not noisy or turbulent, was yet irresistible, bore himg away. Beyond these islands all was darkness, nor could any of the passengers describe the shore at which he first embarked.

Before me, and each otherh side, was an expansei of waters violently agitated, and covered with so thick a mist, that the most perspicacious eye could see but a little way. It appeared to be full of rocks and whirlpools, for many sunk unexpectedly while they were courting the gale with full sails, and insulting those whom they had left behind. So numerous, indeed, were the dangers, and so thick the darkness, that no caution could confer security. Yet there were many, who, by false intelligence, betrayed their followers into whirlpools, or by violence pushed those whom they found in their way against the rocks.

The current was invariable and insurmountable; but though it was impossible to sail against it, or to return to the place that was once passed, yet it was not so violent as to allow no opportunities for dexterity or courage, since, though none could retreat back from danger, yet they might often avoid it by oblique direction.

It was, however, not very common to steer with much care or prudence; for, by some universal infatuation, every man appeared to think himself safe, though he saw his consorts every moment sinking round him; and no sooner had the waves closed over them, than their fate and their misconduct were forgotten; the voyage was persued with the same jocund confidence; every man congratulated himself upon the soundness of his vessel, and believed himself able to stem the whirlpool in which his friend was swallowed, or glide over the rocks on which he was dashed: nor was it often observed that the sight of a wreck made any man change his course;j if he turned aside for a moment, he soon forgot the rudder, and left himself again to the disposal of chance.

This negligence did not proceed from indifference, or from weariness of their present condition; for not one of those, who thus rushed upon destruction, failed, when he was sinking, to call loudly upon his associates for that help which could not now be given him; and many spent their last moments in cautioning others against the folly, by which they were intercepted in the midst of their course. Their benevolence was sometimes praised, but their admonitions were unregarded.

The vessels, in which we had embarked, beingk confessedly unequal to the turbulence of the stream of life,l were visibly impaired in the course of the voyage; so that every passenger was certain, that how long soever he might, by favourable accidents, or by incessant vigilance, be preserved, he must sink at last.

This necessity of perishing might have been expected to sadden the gay, and intimidate the daring, at least to keep the melancholy and timorous in perpetual torments, and hinder them from any enjoyment of the varieties and gratifications which nature offered them as the solace of their labours; yet in effect none seemed less to expect destruction than those to whom it was most dreadful; they all had the art of concealing their danger from themselves; and those who knew their inability to bear the sight of the terrors that embarrassed their way, took care never to look forward, but found some amusement for the present moment, and generally entertained themselves by playing with Hope, who was the constant associate of the voyage of life.

Yet all that Hope ventured to promise, even to those whom she favoured most, was, not that they should escape, but that they should sink last; and with this promise every one was satisfied, though he laughed at the rest for seeming to believe it. Hope, indeed, apparently mockedm the credulity of her companions; for, in proportion as their vessels grew leaky, she redoubled her assurances of safety; and none were more busy in making provisions for a long voyage, than they, whom all but themselves saw likely to perish soon by irreparable decay.

In the midst of the current of life was the “Gulph of Intemperance,”4 a dreadful whirlpool, interspersed with rocks, of which the pointed cragsn were concealed under water, and the topso covered with herbage, on which Ease spread couches of repose, and with shades, where Pleasure warbled the song of invitation. Within sight of these rocks all who sailed on the ocean of life must necessarilyp pass. Reason, indeed, was always at hand to steer the passengers through aq narrow outlet by which they might escape; but very few could, by her intreaties or remonstrances, be induced to put the rudder into her hand, without stipulating that she should approach so near untor the Rocks of Pleasure, that they might solace themselves with a short enjoyment of that delicious region, after which they always determined to persue their course without any other deviation.

Reason was too often prevailed upon so far by these promises, as to venture her charge within the eddy of the Gulph of Intemperance, where, indeed, the circumvolution was weak, but yet interrupted the course of the vessel, and drew it, by insensible rotations, towards the centre.s She thent repented her temerity, and with all her force endeavoured to retreat; but the draught of the gulph was generally too strong to be overcome; and the passenger, having danced in circles with a pleasing and giddy velocity, was at lastu overwhelmed and lost. Those few whom Reason was able to extricate, generally sufferedv so many shocks uponw the points which shot out from the Rocks of Pleasure, that they were unable to continue their course with the same strength and facility as before, but floated along timorously and feebly, endangered by every breeze, and shattered by every ruffle of the water, till they sunk, by slow degrees, after long struggles, and innumerable expedients, always repining at their own folly, and warning others against the first approach to the Gulph of Intemperance.

There were artists who professed to repair the breaches and stop the leaks of the vessels which had been shattered on the Rocks of Pleasure. Manyx appeared to have great confidence in their skill, and some, indeed, were preserved by it fromy sinking, who had received only a single blow; but I remarked that few vessels lasted long which had been much repaired, nor was it found that the artists themselves continued afloat longer than those who had least of their assistance.

The only advantage, which, in the voyage of life, the cautious had above the negligent, was, that they sunk later, and more suddenly; for they passed forward till they had sometimes seen all those in whose company they had issued from the Streightsz of Infancy, perish in the way, and at last were overset by a cross breeze, without the toil of resistance, or the anguish of expectation. Buta such as had often fallen againstb the Rocks of Pleasure, commonly subsidedc by sensible degrees, contended long with the encroaching waters, and harassedd themselves bye labours that scarce Hope herself could flatter with success.

As I was looking upon the various fate of the multitude about me, I was suddenly alarmed with an admonition from some unknown Power, “Gaze not idly upon others when thou thyself art sinking. Whence is this thoughtless tranquillity, when thou and they are equally endangered?” I looked, and seeing the Gulph of Intemperance before me, started and awaked.f

The desire of knowledge, thoughf often animated by extrinsick and adventitious motives, seems on many occasions to operate without subordination to any other principle; we are eager to see and hear,g withouth intention of referring our observations to a farther end; we climb a mountain for a prospect of the plain; we run to the strand in a storm, that we may contemplate the agitationi of the water; we range from city to city, though we profess neitherj architecture nork fortification; we cross seas only to view nature in nakedness, or magnificence in ruins; we are equally allured by novelty of every kind, by a desart or a palace, a cataract or a cavern, by every thing rude, and every thing polished, every thing great and every thing little; we do not see a thicket but withl some temptation to enter it, nor remark an insect flying before us but withm an inclination to persue it.

This passion is, perhaps, regularly heightened in proportion as the powers of the mind are elevated and enlarged. Lucan therefore introducesn Caesar speaking with dignity suitable to the grandeur of his designs and the extent of his capacity, when he declares to the high priest of Egypt, that he has no desire equally powerful with that of finding the origin of the Nile, and that he would quit all the projects of the civil war for a sight of those fountains which had been so long concealed.1 And Homer, when he would furnish the Sirens with a temptation, to which his hero, renowned for wisdom, might yield without disgrace, makes them declare, that none ever departed from them but witho encrease of knowledge.2

There is, indeed, scarce any kind of ideal acquirement which may not be applied to some use, or which may not at least gratify pridep with occasionalq superiority; but whoever attends the motions of his own mind will find, that upon the first appearance of an object, or the first start of a question, his inclination to a nearer view, or more accurate discussion, precedes all thoughts of profit, or of competition; and that his desires take wing by instantaneous impulse, though their flight may be invigorated, or their efforts renewed, by subsequentr considerations. The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us,s andt makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched.

It is evident that the earliest searchers after knowledge must have proposed knowledge only as their reward; and that science, though perhaps the nurslingu of interest, was the daughter of curiosity: for who can believev that they who first watched the course of the stars, foresaw the use of their discoveries to the facilitation of commerce, or the mensuration of time?w They were delighted with the splendor of the nocturnal skies, they found that the lights changed their places; what they admired they were anxious to understand, and in time traced their revolutions.

There are, indeed, beings in the form of men, who appear satisfied with their intellectual possessions, and seem to live without desire of enlarging their conceptions; before whom the world passes without notice, and who are equally unmoved by nature or by art.

This negligence is sometimes only the temporary effect of a predominant passion; a lover finds no inclination to travel any path, but that which leads to the habitation of his mistress; a trader can spare little attention to common occurrences, when his fortune is endangered by a storm. It is frequently the consequence of a total immersion in sensuality: corporeal pleasures may bex indulged till the memory of every other kind of happiness is obliterated; the mind long habituated to a lethargick and quiescent state, is unwilling to wake to the toil of thinking; and though she may sometimes be disturbed by the obtrusion of new ideas, shrinks back again to ignorance and rest.

But, indeed, if we except them to whom the continual tasky of procuring the supports of life, denies all opportunities of deviation from their own narrow track,z the number of such as live without the ardour of enquiry, is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance.

There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at once with ease and novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning. The necessity of doing something, and the fear of undertaking much, sinks the historian to a genealogist, the philosopher to a journalist of the weather, and the mathematician to a constructer of dials.

It is happy when those who cannot content themselves to be idle, nor resolve to be industrious, are at least employed without injury to others; but it seldom happens that we can contain ourselves long in a neutral state, or forbear to sink into vice, when we are no longer soaring towards virtue.

Nugaculus was distinguished in his earlier years by an uncommon liveliness of imagination, quickness of sagacity, and extent of knowledge. When he entered into life, hea applied himself with particular inquisitivenessb to examine the various motives of human actions, the complicated influence of mingled affections, the different modifications of interest and ambition, and the various causes of miscarriage and success both in publick and private affairs.

Though his friends did not discover to what purpose all these observations were collected, or how Nugaculus would much improve his virtue or his fortune by an incessant attention to changes of countenance, bursts of inconsideration, sallies of passion, and all the other casualties by which he used to trace a character, yet they could not deny the study of human nature to be worthy of a wise man; they therefore flattered his vanity, applauded his discoveries, and listened with submissive modestyc to his lectures on the uncertainty of inclination, the weakness of resolves, and the instability of temper, to his accountd of the various motives which agitatee the mind, and his ridicule of the modern dream of a ruling passion.

Such was the first incitement of Nugaculus to a close inspection into the conduct of mankind. He had no interest in view, and therefore no design of supplantation; he had no malevolence, and therefore detected faults without any intention to expose them; but having once found the art of engaging his attention upon others, he had no inclination to call it back to himself, but has passed his time in keeping a watchful eye upon every rising character, and lived upon a small estate without any thought of encreasing it.

He is, by continual application, become a general master of secret history, and can give an account of the intrigues, privatef marriages, competitions, and stratagems of half a century. He knows the mortgages upon every man's estate, the terms upon which every spendthrift raises his money, the real and reputed fortune of every lady, the jointure stipulated by every contract, and the expectations of every family from maiden aunts and childless acquaintances. He can relate the economy of every house, knows how much one man's cellar is robbed by his butler, and the land of another underlet by his steward; he can tell where the manor-house is falling, though large sums are yearly paid for repairs; and where the tenants are felling woods without the consent of the owner.

To obtain all this intelligence he is inadvertently guilty of a thousand acts of treachery. He sees no man's servant without draining him of his trust; he enters no family without flattering the children into discoveries; he is a perpetual spy upon the doors of his neighbours; and knows, by long experience, at whatever distance, the looks of a creditor, a borrower, a lover, and a pimp.

Nugaculus is not ill-natured, and therefore his industry has not hitherto been very mischievous to others, or dangerous to himself; but sinceg he cannot enjoy this knowledge but by discovering it, and, if he had no other motive to loquacity, is obliged to traffick like the chymists, and purchase one secret with another, he is every day more hated as he is more known; forh he is considered by great numbers as one thati has their fame and their happiness in his power, and no man can much love him of whom he lives in fear.

Thus has an intention, innocent at first, if not laudable, the intention of regulating his own behaviour by the experience of others, by an accidental declension to minuteness, betrayedj Nugaculus, not only to a foolish, but vicious waste of a life which might have been honourably passed in publick services, or domestick virtues. He has lost his original intention and given up hisk mind to employments that engross, but do not improve it.

If it can be imagined that there ever was a time when the inhabitants of any country were in a state of equality, without distinction of rank, or peculiarity of possessions, itf is reasonable to believe that every man was then loved in proportion as he could contribute by his strength, or his skill, to the supply of natural wants; there was theng little room for peevish dislike, or capricious favour; the affectionh admitted into the heart was rather esteem than tenderness; andi kindness was only purchased by benefits. But when by force or policy, by wisdom or by fortune, propertyj and superiority were introduced and established, so thatk many were condemned to labour for the support of a few, thenl they whose possessions swelled above their wants, naturally laid out their superfluities upon pleasure; and those who could not gainm friendship by necessary offices, endeavoured to promote their interest by luxuriousn gratifications, and to create needo which they might be courted to supply.

The desires of mankind arep much more numerous than their attainments,q and the capacity of imagination much larger than actual enjoyment.1 Multitudes are thereforer unsatisfied with their allotment; and he that hopes to improve his condition by the favour of another,s and either finds no room for the exertion of greatt qualities, or perceives himself excelled by his rivals, will, byu other expedients,v endeavour to become agreeable where he cannot be important, and learn, by degrees, to number the “art of pleasing” among the most useful studies, and most valuable acquisitions.w2

This art, like others, is cultivated in proportion to its usefulness,x and will always flourish most where it is most rewarded; for this reason we find it practised with great assiduity under absolute governments, where honours and riches are in the hands of one man, whom ally endeavour to propitiate, and who soon becomes so much accustomed to compliance and officiousness, as not easily to find, in the most delicate address, that novelty which is necessary to procure attention.

It is discovered by a very few experiments, that no man is much pleased with a companion,z who does not encrease, in some respect, his fondness of himself; and, therefore, he that wishesa rather to be led forward to prosperity by the gentle hand of favour, than to force his way by labour and merit, must consider with more careb how to display his patron's excellencies than his own; that whenever he approaches, he may fill the imagination with pleasing dreams, and chase away disgust and weariness by a perpetual succession of delightful images.

This may, indeed, sometimes be effected by turning the attention upon advantages which are really possessed, orc upon prospects which reason spreads before hope; for, whoever can deserve or require to be courted,d has generally, either from nature or from fortune, gifts, which he may review with satisfaction, and of which when he is artfully recalled to the contemplation, he will seldom be displeased.e

But those who have once degraded their understanding to an application only to the passions, and who have learned to derive hope from any other sources than industry and virtue, seldom retain dignity and magnanimity sufficient to defendf them against the constant recurrence of temptation to falshood.g He that is too desirous to be loved, will soon learn to flatter, and when he has exhausted all the variations of honest praise, and can delight no longer with the civility of truth, he will invent new topicks of panegyrick, and break out intoh raptures at virtues and beauties conferred by himself.

The drudgeries of dependence would, indeed, be aggravated by hopelesness of success, ifi no indulgence was allowed to adulation. He that will obstinately confine his patron to hear only the commendations which he deserves, will soon be forced to give way to others that regale him with more compass of musick. The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions, or dispositions, which deserve praise, is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame, which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which wej eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

It may, indeed, be proper to make the first approaches under the conduct of truth, and to secure credit to future encomiums, by such praise as may be ratified by the conscience; but the mind once habituated to the lusciousness of eulogy, becomes, in a short time, nice and fastidious, and, like a vitiated palate, is incessantly calling for higher gratifications.

It is scarcely credible to what degreek discernment may be dazzled by the mist of pride, and wisdoml infatuated by the intoxication of flattery; or how low the genius may descend by successive gradations of servility, and how swiftly it may fall down the precipice of falshood.m No man can, indeed, observe without indignation, on what names, both of antient and modern times, the utmost exuberance of praise has been lavished, and by what hands it has been bestowed. It has never yet been found, that the tyrant, the plunderer, the oppressor, the most hateful of the hateful, the most profligate of the profligate, have been denied anyn celebrations which they were willing to purchase, or that wickedness and folly have not found correspondent flatterers through all their subordinations, except when they have been associated with avarice or poverty, and have wanted either inclination or ability to hire a panegyrist.

As there is no character so deformed as to fright away from it the prostitutes of praise, there is no degree of encomiastick veneration which pride has refused. The emperors of Rome suffered themselves to be worshipedo in their lives with altars and sacrifice;p and in an age more enlightened the terms peculiar to the praise and worship of the Supreme Being, have been applied to wretches whom it was the reproach of humanity to number among men; and whom nothing but riches or power hindered those that read or wrote their deification, from hunting into the toils of justice, as disturbers of the peace of nature.

There are, indeed, many among the poetical flatterers, who must be resigned to infamy without vindication, and whom we must confess to have deserted the cause of virtue for pay: theyq have committed, against full conviction, the crime of obliterating the distinctions between good and evil, and, instead of opposing the encroachments of vice,r have incited her progress, and celebrated her conquests. But there is a lower class of sycophants, whose understanding has not made them capable of equal guilt. Everys man of high rank is surrounded with numbers, who have no other rule of thought or action, than his maxims, and his conduct; whom the honour of being numbered among his acquaintance, reconciles to all his vices, and all his absurdities; and who easily persuade themselves to esteem him, by whose regard they consider themselves as distinguished and exalted.

It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness. Stupidity is soon blinded by the splendor of wealth, and cowardice is easily fettered in the shackles of dependence. To solicit patronage, is, at least, in the event, to set virtue to sale. None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falshood;t few can be assiduous without servility, and none can be servile without corruption.

While I was concerting this splendid project, and filling my thoughts with its regulation, its conveniencies, its variety, and its consequences, I sunk gradually into slumber; but the same images,b though less distinct, still continued to float upon myc fancy. I perceived myself at the gate of an immense edifice, where innumerable multitudes were passing without confusion; every face on which I fixed my eyes, seemed settled in the contemplation of some important purpose, and every foot wasd hastened by eagerness ande expectation. I followed the croud without knowing whither I should be drawn, and remained a while in the unpleasing state of an idler, where all other beings were busy, giving place every moment to those who had more importance in their looks. Ashamed to stand ignorant, and afraid to ask questions, at last I saw a lady sweeping by me, whom, by the quickness of her eyes, the agility of her steps, and a mixture of levity and impatience, I knew to be my long-loved protectress, Curiosity. “Great goddess,” said I, “may thy votary be permitted to implore thy favour; if thou hast been my directress from the first dawn of reason, if I have followed thee through the maze of life with invariable fidelity, if I have turnedf to every new call, and quitted at thy nod one persuit for another, if I have never stopped at the invitations of fortune, nor forgot thy authority in the bowers of pleasure, inform me now whither chance has conducted me.”

“Thou art now,” replied the smiling power, “in the presence of Justice, and of Truth, whom the father of gods and men has sent down to register the demands and pretensions of mankind, that the world may at last be reduced to order, and that none may complain hereafter of being doomed to tasks for which they are unqualified, of possessing faculties for which they cannot find employment, or virtues that languish unobserved for want of opportunities to exert them, of being encumbered with superfluities which they would willingly resign, or of wasting away in desires which ought to be satisfied. Justice is now to examine every man's wishes, and Truth is to record them; let us approach, and observe the progress of this great transaction.”

She then moved forward, and Truth, who knew her among the most faithful of her followers, beckoned her to advance, till we were placed near the seat of Justice. The first who required the assistance of the office, cameg forward with a slow pace, and tumour of dignity, and shaking a weighty purse in his hand, demanded to be registredh by Truth, as the Maecenas of the present age, the chief encourager of literary merit, to whom men of learning and wit might apply in any exigence or distress with certainty of succour. Justice very mildly enquired, whether he had calculated the expence of such a declaration? whether he had been informed what number of petitioners would swarm about him? whether he could distinguish idleness andi negligence from calamity, ostentation from knowledge, or vivacity from wit? To these questions he seemed not well provided with a reply, but repeated his desire to be recorded a patron. Justice then offered to register his proposal on these conditions, that he should never suffer himself to be flattered; that he should never delay an audience when he had nothing to do; and that he should never encourage followers without intending to reward them. These terms were too hard to be accepted; for what, said he, is the end of patronage, but the pleasure of reading dedications, holding multitudes in suspense, and enjoying their hopes, their fears, and their anxiety, flattering them to assiduity, and, at last, dismissing them for impatience? Justice heard his confession, and ordered his name to be posted upon the gate among cheats, and robbers, and publick nuisances, which all were by that notice warned to avoid.

Another required to be made known as the discoverer of a new art of education, by whichj languages and sciences might be taught to all capacities, and all inclinations, without fear of punishment, pain of confinement, loss of any part of the gay mien of ignorance, or any obstruction of the necessary progress in dress, dancing, or cards.

Justice and Truth did not trouble this great adept with many enquiries; but finding his address aukward, and his speech barbarous, ordered him to be registeredk as a tall fellow who wanted employment, and might serve in any post where the knowledge of reading and writing was not required.

A man of a very gravel and philosophick aspect, required notice to be given of his intention to set outm a certain day, on a submarine voyage, and of his willingness to take in passengers for no more than double the price at which they might sail above water. His desire was granted, and he retired to a convenient stand, in expectation of filling his ship, and growing rich in a short time by the secrecy, safety, and expedition of the passage.

Another desired to advertise the curious, that he had, for the advancement of true knowledge, contrived an optical instrument, by which those who laid out their industry on memorials of the changes ofn the wind, might observe the direction of the weathercocks on the hitherside of the lunar world.

Another wished to be known as the author of an invention, by which cities or kingdoms might be made warm in winter by a single fire, a kettle, and pipe. Another had a vehicle by which a man might bid defiance to floods, and continue floating in an inundation, without any inconvenience, till the water should subside. Justice considered these projects as of no importance but to their authors, and therefore scarcely condescended to examine them; but Truth refused to admit them into the register.

Twenty different pretenders came in one hour to give notice of an universal medicine, by which all diseases might be cured or prevented, and life protracted beyondo the age of Nestor. But Justice informed them, that one universal medicine was sufficient, and she would delay the notificationp till she saw who could longest preserve his own life.

A thousand other claims and offers were exhibited and examined. I remarked, among this mighty multitude, that, of intellectual advantages, many had great exuberance, and few confessed any want; of every art there were a hundred professors for a single pupil; but of other attainments, such as riches, honours, and preferments, I found none that had too much, but thousands and ten thousands that thought themselves intitled to a larger dividend.

It often happened, that old misers, and women, married at the close of life, advertised their want of children; nor was it uncommon for those who had a numerous offspring, to give notice of a son or daughter to be spared: but though appearances promised well on both sides, the bargain seldom succeeded; for they soon lost their inclination to adopted children, and proclaimed theirq intentions to promote some scheme of publick charity: a thousand proposals were immediately made, among which they hesitated till death precluded the decision.

As I stood looking on this scene of confusion, Truth condescended to ask me, what was my business at her office? I was struck with the unexpected question, and awaked by my efforts to answer it.

An assurance of unfading laurels, and immortal reputation, is the settled reciprocation of civility between amicable writers. Tog raise “monuments more durable than brass, and more conspicuous than pyramids,”1 has been long the commonh boast of literature; but among the innumerable architects that erect columns to themselves, far the greateri part, either for want of durable materials, or of art to dispose them, see their edifices perish as they are towering to completion, and those few that for a while attract the eye of mankind, are generally weak in the foundation, and soon sink by the saps of time.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a publick library; for who can see the wall crouded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation, and accurate enquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue,2 and preserved only to encrease the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism hasj delighted in the gradual advances of hisk authority, the immutability of hisl decrees, and the perpetuity of his power?m

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity, most areo forgotten, because theyp never deserved to be remembered,q and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the stratagemr of intrigue, or the servility of adulation.

Nothing is more common than to find men whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries, as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.s Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long enquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Everyt period of time has produced theseu bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion, and then break at once and are annihilated.v The learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose characters have survived their works; but, perhaps, if we could now retrieve them, we should find them only the Granvilles, Montagues, Stepneys, and Sheffields of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they could be raised to notice.w

It cannot, however, be denied, that many have sunk into oblivion, whom it were unjust to number with this despicable class. Various kinds of literary fame seem destined to various measures of duration. Some spread into exuberance with a very speedy growth, but soon wither and decay; some rise more slowly, but last long. Parnassus has its flowers of transient fragrance, as well as its oaks of towering height, and its laurels of eternal verdure.

Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance, are the writers who take advantage ofx present incidents ory characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal attention.3 It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in every assembly, andz has divided the nation into parties; or when we display the faults or virtues of him whose public conduct has made almost every man his enemy or his friend. To the quick circulation of such productions all the motivesa of interest and vanity concur;b the disputant enlarges his knowledge, the zealot animates his passion, and every man is desirous to inform himself concerning affairs so vehemently agitated and variously represented.

It is scarcely to be imagined, through how many subordinations of interest, the ardour of party is diffused; and what multitudes fancy themselves affected by every satire or panegyrick on a man of eminence. Whoever has, at any time, taken occasion to mention him with praise or blame, whoever happens to love orc hate any of his adherents, as he wishesd to confirm his opinion, and to strengthen his party, will diligently perusee every paper from which he can hope for sentiments like his own. An object, howeverf small in itself,g if placed near to the eye, will engross all the rays of light; and a transaction, however trivial, swells into importance, when it presses immediately on our attention.h He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign, will wonder why they were soi eagerly read, or so loudly praised. Manyj of the performances which had power to inflame factions, and fill a kingdom with confusion, have now very little effect upon a frigid critick, and the time is coming, when the compositions of later hirelings shall lie equally despised.k In proportion, as those who write on temporary subjects, are exalted above their merit at first, they are afterwards depressed below it; nor can the brightest elegance of diction, or most artful subtilty of reasoning, hope for much esteem from those whose regard is no longer quickened by curiosity orl pride.

It is, indeed, the fate of controvertists, even when they contend for philosophical or theological truth, to be soon laid aside and slighted. Either the question is decided, and there is no more place for doubt and opposition; or mankind despair of understanding it, and grow weary of disturbance,m content themselves with quiet ignorance, and refuse to be harrassed with labours which they have no hopes of recompensing with knowledge.

The authors of new discoveries may surely expect to be reckoned among those, whose writings are secure of veneration: yet it often happens that the general reception of a doctrine obscures the books in which it was delivered. When any tenet is generally received and adopted as an incontrovertible principle, we seldom look back to the arguments upon which it was first established, orn can bear thato tediousness of deduction, andp multiplicity of evidence, by which its author was forced to reconcile it to prejudice, and fortify it in the weakness of novelty against obstinacy and envy.

It is well known how much of our philosophy is derived from Boyle's discovery of the qualities of the air; yet of those who now adopt or enlarge his theory, very few have read the detail of his experiments. His name is, indeed, reverenced; but his works are neglected;q we are contented to know, that he conquered his opponents, without enquiring what cavils were produced against him, or by what proofs they were confuted.

Some writers apply themselves to studies boundless and inexhaustible, as experiments and natural philosophy. These are always lost in successive compilations, as new advances are made, and former observations become more familiar. Others spend their lives in remarks on language, or explanations of antiquities, and only afford materials for lexicographers and commentators, whor are themselves overwhelmed by subsequent collectors, thats equally destroy the memory of their predecessors by amplification, transposition, or contraction. Every new system of nature gives birth to a swarm of expositors, whose businesst is to explain and illustrate it, and who can hope to exist no longer than the founder of their sect preserves his reputation.

There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame. He who has carefullyu studied human nature, and can wellv describe it, may with most reason flatter his ambition.w Bacon, among all his pretensions to the regard of posterity, seems to have pleased himself chiefly with his essays, “which come home to mens business and bosoms,” and of which, therefore, he declares his expectation, that they “will live as long as books last.”4 It may, however, satisfy an honest and benevolent mind to have been useful, though less conspicuous; nor will he that extends his hopex to higher rewards, be so much anxious to obtain praise, as to discharge the duty which Providence assigns him.

I have, indeed, hitherto avoided the practice of uniting gay and solemn subjects in the same paper, because it seems absurd for an author to counteract himself, to press at once with equal force upon both parts of the intellectual balance, ore give medicines, which, like the double poison of Dryden, destroy the force of one another.1 I have endeavoured sometimes to divert, and sometimes to elevate; but have imagined it an useless attempt to disturb merriment by solemnity, or interrupt seriousness by drollery. Yetf I shall this day publish two letters of very different tendency, which I hope, like tragicomedy, may chance to please even when they are not critically approved.

The same observation may be transferred to the time allotted us in our present state. When we have deducted all that is absorbed in sleep, all that is inevitably appropriated to the demands of nature, or irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in regulating the superficial decorations of life, or isc given up in the reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn from us by thed violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude and languor; we shall find that part of our duration very small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or which we can spend wholly at our own choice. Many of our hours are lost in a rotation of petty cares, in a constant recurrence of the same employments; many of our provisions for ease or happiness are always exhausted by the present day; and a great part of our existence serves no other purpose, than that of enabling us to enjoy the rest.

Of the few moments which are left in our disposal, it may reasonably be expected, that we should be so frugal, as toe let none of them slip from us without some equivalent; and perhaps it might be found, that as the earth, however streightened by rocks andf waters, is capable of producing more than all its inhabitants are able to consume, our lives, though much contracted by incidental distraction,g would yet afford us a large space vacant to the exercise of reason and virtue;h that we want not time, but diligence, for great performances; and that we squander much of our allowance, even while we think iti sparing and insufficient.

This natural and necessary comminution of our lives, perhaps, often makes us insensible of the negligence with which we suffer them to slide away. Wej never consider ourselves as possessed at once of time sufficient for any great design, and therefore indulge ourselves in fortuitous amusements. We think it unnecessary to take an account of a few supernumerary moments, which, however employed, could have produced little advantage, and which were exposed to a thousand chances of disturbance and interruption.

It is observable, that either by nature or by habit, our facultiesk are fitted to images of a certain extent, to which we adjust great things by division, and little things by accumulation. Of extensive surfacesl we can only take a survey, as the parts succeed one another; and atoms we cannot perceive, till they are united into masses. Thus we break the vast periods of time into centuries and years; and thus, if we would know the amount of moments, we must agglomerate them into days and weeks.

The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us, that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expences, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafterm with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the presentn value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of timeo fall useless to the ground.

It is usual for those who are advised top the attainment of any new qualification, to look uponq themselves as required to change the general course of their conduct, to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and to devoter their days and nights to a particular attention.s But all common degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower price; he that should steadily and resolutely assign to any science or language those interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crouded variety of diversion or employment, would find every day new irradiations of knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped from frequency and perseverance, than from violentt efforts, and suddenu desires; efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of reason, and rangev capriciously from one object to another.

The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure, and a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false estimate of the human powers. Ifw we except those gigantick and stupendous intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make theirx advances in knowledge by short flights between each of which the mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short time is sufficient; and it is only necessary, that whenever that time is afforded, it be well employed.

Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation; and when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears another incursion, till the new-acquired truth has become familiar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary business, or in voluntary levities, the understandingy is equally abstracted from the object of enquiry; but, perhaps, if it be detained by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity, than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is encreased by the contraction of its channel.

From some cause like this, it has probably proceeded, that among those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external circumstances could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business, the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wandering and unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus was one continual peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him; he yet found means by unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours, which, in the midst of the most restless activity, will remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition would have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life, that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined to his knowledge of the world, such application to books, that he will stand for ever in the first rank of literary heroes. How thisz proficiency was obtained he sufficiently discovers, by informing us, that the Praise of Folly, one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy; ne totum illud tempus quo equo fuit insidendum, illiteratis fabulis terreretur,a lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horseback, should be tattled away without regard to literature.2

An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto,3 that “time was his estate”;b an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultivation, butc will always abundantlyd repay the labours of industry, ande satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for shew rather than for use.

Though you seem to have taken a view sufficiently extensive of the miseries of life, and have employed much of your speculation on mournful subjects, you have not yet exhausted the whole stock of human infelicity. There is still a species of wretchedness which escapes your observation, though ita might supply you with many sage remarks, and salutary cautions.

I cannot but imagine the start of attention awakened by this welcome hint; and at this instant see the Rambler snuffing his candle, rubbing his spectacles, stirring his fire, locking out interruption, and settling himself in his easy chair, that he may enjoy a new calamity without disturbance. For,b whether it be, that continued sickness or misfortune has acquainted you only with the bitterness of being; or that you imagine none but yourself able to discover what I suppose has been seen and felt by all the inhabitants of the world: whether youc intend your writings as antidotal to the levity and merriment with which your rivals endeavour to attract the favour of the publick; or fancy that you have some particular powers of dolorous declamation, and “warble out your groans” with uncommon elegance or energy; it is certain, that whatever be your subject, melancholy for the most part bursts in upon your speculation, your gaiety is quickly overcast, and though your readers may be flattered with hopes of pleasantry, they are seldom dismissed but with heavy hearts.

That I may therefore gratify you with an imitation of your own syllables of sadness, I will inform you that I was condemned by some disastrous influence to be an only son, born to the apparent prospect of a large fortune, and allotted to my parents at that time of life when satiety of common diversions allows the mind to indulge parental affectiond with greater intenseness. My birth was celebrated by the tenants with feasts, and dances, and bagpipes; congratulations were sent from every family within ten miles round; and my parents discovered in my first cries such tokens of future virtue and understanding, that they declared themselves determined to devote the remaining part of life to my happiness and the encrease of their estate.

The abilities of my father and mother were not perceptibly unequal, and education had given neither much advantage over the other. They had both kept good company, rattled in chariots, glittered in play-houses, and danced at court, and were bothe expert in the games that were in their timef called in as auxiliaries against the intrusion of thought.

When there is such a parity between two persons associated for life, the dejection which the husband, if he be not completely stupid, must always suffer for want of superiority, sinks him to submissiveness. My mamma therefore, governed the family without controul; and except that my father still retained some authority in the stables, and now and then, after a supernumerary bottle, broke a looking-glass or china dish to prove his sovereignty, the whole course of the year was regulated by her direction, the servants received from her all their orders, and the tenants were continued or dismissed at her discretion.

She therefore thought herself entitled to the superintendence of her son's education; and when my father, at the instigation of the parson, faintly proposed that I should be sent to school, very positively told him, that she would not suffer so fine a child to be ruined; that she never knew any boys at a grammar-school that could come into a room without blushing, or sit at the table without some aukward uneasiness; that they were always putting themselves into danger by boisterous plays, or vitiating their behaviour with mean company; and that, for her part, she would rather follow me to the grave than see me tear my cloaths, and hang down my head, and sneak about with dirty shoes, and blotted fingers, myg hair unpowdered, and myh hat uncocked.

My father, who had no other end in his proposal than to appear wise and manly, soon acquiesced, since I was not to live by my learning; for indeed, he had known very few students that had not some stiffnessi in their manner. They therefore agreed, that a domestick tutor should be procured, and hired an honest gentleman of mean conversation and narrow sentiments, but whom, having passed the common formsj of literary education, they implicitly concluded qualified to teach all that was to be learned from a scholar. He thought himself sufficiently exalted by being placed at the same table with his pupil, and had no other view than to perpetuate his felicity byk the utmost flexibility of submission to all my mother's opinions and caprices. Hel frequently took away my book, lest I should mope with too much application, charged me never to write without turning up my ruffles, and generally brushed my coat before he dismissed me into the parlour.

He hadm no occasion to complain of too burdensomen an employment; for my mother very judiciously considered, that I was not likely to grow politer in his company, ando suffered me not to pass any more time in his apartment than my lesson required. When I was summoned to my task, shep enjoined me not to get any of my tutor's ways, who was seldom mentioned before me but for practices to be avoided. I was every moment admonished not to lean on my chair, cross my legs, or swing my hands like my tutor; and once my mother very seriously deliberated upon his total dismission, because I began, she said, to learn his mannerq of sticking on my hat, and had his bend in my shoulders, and his totter in my gait.

Such, however, was her care, that I escaped all these depravities; and when I was only twelve years old, had rid myself of every appearance of childish diffidence. I was celebrated round the country for the petulance of my remarks, and the quickness of my replies; and many a scholar five years older than myself have I dashed into confusion by the steadiness of my countenance, silenced by my readiness of repartee, and tortured with envy by the address with which I picked up a fan, presented a snuff-box, or received an empty tea-cup.

At fourteenr I wass completely skilled in all the niceties of dress, andt I could not only enumerate all the variety of silks, and distinguish the product of a French loom, but dart my eye through a numerous company, and observe every deviation from the reigning mode. I was universally skilful in all the changes of expensive finery; but as every one, they say,u has something to which he is particularly born, was eminently knowing in Brussels lace.

The next year saw me advanced to the trust and power of adjusting the ceremonial of an assembly. All received their partnersv from my hand, and to me every stranger applied for introduction. My heart now disdained the instructions of a tutor, who was rewarded with a small annuity for life, and left me qualified, in my own opinion, to govern myself.

In a short time I came to London, and as my father was well known among the higher classes of life, soon obtained admission to the most splendid assemblies, and most crouded cardtables. Here I found myself universally caressed and applauded: the ladies praised the fancy of my cloaths, the beauty of my form, and the softness of my voice; endeavoured in every place to force themselves uponw my notice; and invited by a thousand oblique solicitations my attendance to the playhouse, and my salutations in the park. I was now happy to the utmost extent of my conception; I passed every morning in dress, every afternoon in visits, and every night in some select assemblies, where neither care nor knowledge were suffered to molest us.

After a few years, however, these delights became familiar, and I had leisure to look round me with more attention. I then found that my flatterers had very little power to relieve the languor of satiety, orx recreate weariness, by varied amusement;y and therefore endeavoured to enlarge the sphere of my pleasures, and to try what satisfaction might be found in the society of men. I will not deny the mortification with which I perceived, that every man whose name I had heard mentioned with respect, received mez with a kind of tenderness nearly bordering on compassion; and that those whose reputation was not well established, thought it necessary to justify their understandings, by treating me with contempt. One of these witlings elevated his crest, by asking me in a full coffee-house the price of patches; and another whispered, that he wondered why Miss Frisk did not keep me that afternoon to watch her squirrel.

When I found myself thus hunted from all masculine conversation by those who were themselves barely admitted, I returned to the ladies, and resolved to dedicate my life to their service and their pleasure. But I find that I have now lost my charms. Of those with whom I entered the gay world, some are married, some have retired, and some have so much changed their opinion, that they scarcely pay any regard to my civilities, if there is any other man in the place. Thea new flight of beauties to whom I have made myb addresses, suffer me to pay the treat,c and then titter with boys. So that I now find myself welcome only to a few grave ladies, who, unacquainted with all that gives either use or dignity to life, are content to pass their hours between their bed and their cards, without esteem from the old, or reverence from the young.

I cannot but think, Mr. Rambler, that I have reason to complain; for surely the femalesd ought to pay some regard to the age of him whose youth was passed in endeavours to please them. They that encourage folly in the boy, have no right to punish it in the man. Yet I find, that though they lavish their first fondness upon pertness and gaiety, they soon transfer their regard to othere qualities, and ungratefully abandon their adorers to dream out their last years in stupidity and contempt.

The various methods of propitiation and atonementj which fear and folly have dictated, or artifice and interest tolerated ink the different parts of the world, however they may sometimes reproach or degrade humanity, at least shew the general consent of all ages and nations in their opinion of thel placability of the divine nature. That God will forgive, may, indeed, be established as the first and fundamental truth of religion; for though the knowledge of his existence is the origin of philosophy, yet, without the belief of his mercy, it would havem little influence upon our mortal conduct. Theren could be no prospect of enjoying the protection or regard of him, whom the least deviation from rectitude made inexorable for ever; and every man would naturally withdraw his thoughts from the contemplation of a Creator, whom he must consider as a governor too pureo to be pleased, and too severe to be pacified; as an enemy infinitely wise, and infinitelyp powerful, whom he could neither deceive, escape, nor resist.

Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour. A constant and unfailing obedience is above the reach of terrestrial diligence; and therefore the progress of life could only have been the natural descent of negligent despair from crime to crime, had not the universal persuasion of forgiveness to be obtained by proper means of reconciliation recalled those to the paths of virtue whom their passions had solicited aside; and animated to new attempts, and firmer perseverance, thoseq whom difficulty had discouraged, or negligence surprised.r

In timess and regions so disjoined from each other, that there can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments either by commerce or tradition, has prevailed at general and uniform expectation of propitiating God by corporal austerities, of anticipating his vengeance by voluntary inflictions, andu appeasing his justice by a speedy and chearful submission to a less penalty when a greater is incurred.

Incorporated minds will always feel some inclination towards exterior acts, and ritual observances. Ideas not represented by sensible objects are fleeting, variable, and evanescent. We are not able to judge of the degree of conviction which operated at any particular time upon our own thoughts,v but as it is recorded by some certain and definite effect. He that reviews his life in order to determine the probability of his acceptance with God, if he could once establish the necessary proportion between crimes and sufferings, might securely rest upon his performance of the expiation; but while safety remains the reward only of mental purity, he is always afraid lest he should decide too soon in his own favour, lest he should not have felt the pangs of true contrition; lestw he should mistake satiety for detestation,x or imagine that his passions are subdued when they are only sleeping.

From this natural and reasonable diffidence arose, in humble and timorous piety, a disposition to confound penance with repentance, to repose on human determinations, and to receive from some judicial sentencey the statedz and regular assignment of reconciliatory pain. We are never willing to be without resource: we seek in the knowledge of others a succour for our own ignorance, and are ready to trust any that will undertake to direct us when we have no confidence in ourselves.

This desire to ascertain by some outward marks the state of the soul, and this willingness to calm the conscience by some settleda method, have produced, as they are diversify'db in their effects by various tempers and principles, mostc of the disquisitions and rules, the doubts and solutions, that have embarrassed the doctrine of repentance, andd perplexed tender and flexible minds with innumerable scruples concerning the necessary measures of sorrow, and adequate degrees of self-abhorrence; and these rules corrupted by fraud, or debased by credulity, have bye the common resiliency of the mind from one extreme to another,f incited others to an open contempt of all subsidiary ordinances, all prudential caution, and the whole discipline of regulated piety.

Repentance, however difficult to be practised, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. “Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice, from the conviction that it has offended God.” Sorrow, and fear, and anxiety, are properly not parts, but adjuncts of repentance; yet they are toog closely connected with it, to be easily separated; forh they not only mark its sincerity, but promote its efficacy.

No man commits any act of negligence or obstinacy, by which his safety or happiness in this world isi endangered, without feeling the pungency of remorse. He who is fully convinced, that he suffers by his own failure, can neverj forbear to trace back his miscarriage to its first cause, to image to himself a contrary behaviour, and to form involuntary resolutions against the like fault, even when he knows that he shall never again have the power of committing it. Danger considered as imminent naturally producesk such trepidations of impatience as leave all human means of safety behind them: he that has once caught an alarm of terror, isl every moment seized with useless anxieties,m adding one security to another, trembling with sudden doubts, and distracted by the perpetual occurrence of new expedients. If, therefore, he whose crimes have deprived him of the favour of God, can reflect upon his conduct without disturbance, or can at will banish the reflection; if he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide,n can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting foro security; what can he judge of himself but that he is not yet awakedp to sufficient conviction, since every loss is more lamented than the loss of the divine favour, and every danger more dreaded than the danger of final condemnation?

Retirement from the cares and pleasures of the world has been often recommended as useful to repentance. This at least is evident,q that every one retires, whenever ratiocination and recollection are required on other occasions: and surely the retrospect of life, the disentanglement of actions complicated with innumerable circumstances, and diffused in various relations, the discovery of the primary movements of the heart, and the extirpation of lusts and appetites deeply rooted and widely spread, may be allowed to demand some secession from sport and noise, and business and folly. Some suspension of common affairs, some pause of temporal pain and pleasure, is doubtlessr necessary to him that deliberates for eternity, who is forming the only plan in which miscarriage cannot be repaired, and examining the only question in whichs mistake cannot be rectified.

Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is invigorated and roused,t by which the attractions of pleasureu are interrupted, and the chains of sensuality are broken. It is observed by one of the fathers, that “he who restrains himself in the use of things lawful, will never encroach upon things forbidden.”1 Abstinence, if nothing more, is, at least, a cautious retreat from the utmost verge of permission, and confers that security which cannot be reasonably hoped by him that dares always to hover over the precipice of destruction, or delights to approach the pleasures which he knows it fatal to partake. Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should readily have recourse, if we dreaded guilt as we dread pain.

The completion and sum of repentance is a change of life. That sorrow which dictates no caution, that fear which does not quicken our escape, that austerity which fails to rectify our affections, are vain and unavailing. But sorrow and terror must naturally precede reformation; for what other cause can produce it? He, therefore, that feels himself alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state, and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude, that the great work of repentance is begun, and hope by retirement and prayer, the natural and religious means of strengthening his conviction, to impress upon his mind such a sense of the divine presence, as may overpower the blandishments of secularv delights, and enable him to advance from one degree of holiness to another, till death shall set him free from doubt, and contest, miseryw and temptation.

I am afraid there is little hoped of persuading the young and sprightly part of my readers, upon whom the spring naturally forces my attention, to learn from the great process of nature, the difference between diligence and hurry, between speed and precipitation; to prosecute their designs with calmness,e to watch the concurrence of opportunity, and endeavour to find the lucky moment which they cannot make. Youth is the time of enterprize and hope; having yet hadf no occasion of comparing our force with any opposing power, we naturally form presumptions in our own favour, and imagine that obstruction and impediment will give way before us. The first repulses rather inflame vehemence than teach prudence; a brave and generous mind is long before it suspects its own weakness, or submits to sap the difficulties which it expectedg to subdue by storm.h Before disappointments have enforced the dictates of philosophy, we believe it in our power to shorten the interval between the first cause and the last effect; we laughi at the timorous delays of plodding industry, and fancy that by encreasing the fire, we can at pleasure accelerate the projection.

At ourj entrance into the world, when health and vigour give us fair promises of time sufficient for the regular maturation ofk our schemes, and a long enjoyment ofl our acquisitions, we are eager to seize the present moment; wem pluck every gratification within our reach, without suffering it to ripen into perfection, andn croud all the varieties of delight into a narrow compass: but age seldom fails to change our conduct; we growo negligent of time in proportion as we have less remaining, and suffer the last part of life to steal from us in languidp preparations forq future undertakings,r ors slow approaches tot remote advantages,u in weak hopes of some fortuitous occurrence, orv drowsyw equilibrations of undetermined counsel. Whether it be that the aged, having tasted the pleasures of man'sx condition, and found themy delusive, become less anxious for their attainment; orz that frequent miscarriages have depressed them to despair, and frozen them to inactivity; or thata death shocks them more as it advances upon them, and they are afraid to remindb themselves of their decay, or to discover to their own hearts, that the time of trifling is past.

A perpetual conflict withc natural desires seems to be the lot of our present state. In youth we require something of the tardiness and frigidity of age; and in age, we must labour to recal the fire and impetuosity of youth; in youth we must learn to expect, and in age to enjoy.

The torment of expectation is, indeed, not easily to be born at a time when every idea of gratification fires the blood, and flashes on the fancy; when the heart is vacant to every fresh form of delight, and has no rival engagements to withdraw it from the importunities of a new desire. Yet since the fear of missing what we seek must always be proportionable to the happiness expectedd from possessing it, the passions, even in this tempestuous state, might be somewhat moderatede by frequent inculcation of the mischief of temerity, and the hazardf of losing that which we endeavour to seize before our time.

He that too early aspires to honours, must resolve to encounter not only the opposition of interest, but the malignity of envy. He that is too eager to be rich, generally endangers his fortune in wild adventures, and uncertain projects; and he that hastens too speedily to reputation, often raisesg his character by artifices and fallacies, decks himself in colours which quickly fade, or in plumes which accident may shake off, or competition pluck away.

Theh danger of early eminence has been extended by some, even to the gifts of nature; and an opinion has been long conceived, that quickness of invention, accuracy of judgment, or extent of knowledge, appearingi before the usual time, presage a short life. Even those who are less inclined to form general conclusions, from instances which by their own nature must be rare, have yet been inclined to prognosticate no suitable progress from the first sallies of rapid wits; but have observed, that after a short effort they either loiter or faint, and suffer themselves to be surpassed by the evenj and regular perseverance of slower understandings.

Itk frequently happens, that applause abates diligence. Whoeverl finds himself to have performed more than was demanded, will bem contented to spare the labour of unnecessary performances, and sitn down to enjoy at ease his superfluities of honour. Heo whom success has made confident of his abilities, quickly claimsp the privilege of negligence, and looks contemptuously on the gradual advances of a rival, whom he imagines himself able to leave behindq whenever he shall again summon his force to the contest. But long intervals of pleasure dissipate attention, and weaken constancy; nor is it easy for him that has sunk from diligence into sloth to rouse out ofr his lethargy, to recollect his notions, rekindle his curiosity, and engages with his former ardour in the toils of study.

Even that friendship which intends the reward of genius, too often tends to obstruct it. The pleasure of being caressed, distinguished, and admired, easily seduces the student from literary solitude. He is ready to follow the call whicht summons him to hear his own praise, and whichu, perhaps, at once flatters hisv appetitew with certainty of pleasures,x and his ambition with hopes of patronage; pleasures which he conceives inexhaustible, and hopes which he has not yet learned to distrust.

Thesey evils, indeed,z are by no means to be imputed to nature, ora considered as inseparable from an early display of uncommon abilities. Theyb may be certainly escaped by prudence and resolution, and mustc therefore be recounted ratherd as consolations to those who are less liberally endowed, than as discouragements to such as are born with uncommon qualities. Beauty is well known to draw after it the persecutions of impertinence, to incite the artifices of envy, and to raise the flames of unlawful love; yet among the ladies whom prudence or modesty have made most eminent,e who hasf ever complained of the inconvenienciesg of an amiable form? orh would have purchased safety by the loss of charms?i

Neither grace of person, nor vigour of understanding, are to be regarded otherwise than as blessings, as means of happiness indulged by the Supreme Benefactor; but the advantages of either may be lost by too much eagerness to obtain them. A thousand beauties in their first blossom, by an imprudent exposure to the open world, have suddenly withered at the blast of infamy; and men who might have subjected new regions to the empire of learning have been lured by the praise of their first productions from academical retirement, and wasted their days in vice and dependence. The virgin who too soon aspires to celebrity and conquest, perishes by childish vanity, ignorant credulity, or guiltlessj indiscretion. The genius who catches at laurels and preferment before his time, mocks the hopes that he had excited, and loses those years which might have been most usefully employed, the years of youth, of spirit, and vivacity.

It is one of the innumerable absurdities of pride, that we are never more impatient of direction, than in that part of life when we need it most; we are in haste to meet enemies whom we have not strength to overcome, and to undertake tasks which we cannot perform: and as he that once miscarries does not easily persuade mankind to favourk another attempt, an ineffectual struggle forl fame is often followed by perpetual obscurity.

The same laxity of regimen is equally necessary to intellectual health, and to al perpetual susceptibility of occasional pleasure. Long confinement to the same company whichm perhaps similitude of taste brought first together, quicklyn contracts his faculties, and makes a thousand things offensive that are in themselves indifferent; a man accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments,o soon bars all the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general gratificationsp of mankind.

In things which are not immediately subject to religious or moral consideration, it is dangerous to be too long or too rigidly in the right. Sensibility may by an incessant attention to elegance and propriety, be quickened to a tenderness inconsistent with the condition of humanity, irritable by the smallest asperity, and vulnerable by the gentlest touch. He that pleases himself too much with minute exactness, and submits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address, below theq point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the croud of life, be harassedr with innumerable distresses, from which those who have not in the same manner encreased their sensations find no disturbance. His exotick softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity, like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries, from the dews and sunshine of the tropical regions.

There will always be a wide interval between practical and ideal excellence; and therefore, if we allow not ourselves to be satisfied while we can perceive any error or defect, we must refer ours hopes of ease to some other period of existence. It is well known, that, exposed to a microscope, the smoothest polish of the most solid bodies discovers cavities and prominences; and that the softest bloom of roseate virginity repels the eye with excrescences and discolorations. The perceptions as well as the senses may be improved to our own disquiet, and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise in time an artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with phantoms of turpitude, shew us the nakedt skeleton of every delight, and present us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of beauty.

Peevishness, indeed, would perhaps very little disturb the peace of mankind, were it always the consequence of superfluous delicacy; for it is the privilege only of deep reflection, or lively fancy, to destroy happiness by art and refinement. But byu continual indulgence of a particular humour, or byv long enjoyment of undisputed superiority, the dull andw thoughtless may likewisex acquire the power of tormenting themselves and others, and become sufficiently ridiculous or hateful to those who are within sight of their conduct, or reach of their influence.

They thaty have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful, and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association, but with those thatz will watch their nod,a and submit themselves to unlimited authority. Such is the effect of having lived without the necessity of consulting any inclinationb but their own.

The irascibility of this class of tyrants is generally exerted upon petty provocations, such as are incident to understandings not far extended beyond the instincts of animal life; butc unhappily he that fixes his attention on things always before him, will never have long cessations of anger.d There are many veterans of luxury, upon whom every noon brings a paroxysm of violence, fury, and execration; theye never sit down to their dinner without finding the meat so injudiciously bought, or so unskilfully dressed, such blunders in the seasoning, or such improprieties in the sawce,f as can scarcely be expiated without blood; and,g in the transports of resentment, make very little distinctions between guilt and innocence, but let fly their menaces, or growl out their discontent upon all whom fortune exposes to the storm.h

It is not easy to imaginei a more unhappy condition than that of dependence on a peevish man. In every other state of inferiority the certainty of pleasing is perpetually increased by a fuller knowledge of our duty; and kindnessj and confidence are strengthened by every new act of trust, and proof of fidelity. But peevishness sacrifices to a momentary offence the obsequiousness or usefulness of half a life, and as more is performed encreases her exactions.

Chrysalus gained a fortune by trade, and retired into the country; and, having a brother burdenedk by the number of his children, adopted one of his sons. The boy was dismissed with many prudent admonitions; informed of his father's inability to maintain him in his native rank; cautioned against all opposition to the opinions or precepts of his uncle; and animated to perseverance by the hopes of supporting the honour of the family, and overtopping his elder brother. He had a natural ductility of mind, without much warmth of affection, or elevation of sentiment; and therefore readily complied with every variety of caprice; patiently endured contradictory reproofs; heard false accusations without pain, and opprobrious reproaches without reply; laughed obstreperously at the ninetieth repetition of a joke; asked questions about the universal decay of trade; admired the strength of those heads by which the price of stocks is changed and adjusted; and behaved with such prudence and circumspection, that after six years the will was made, and Juvenculus was declared heir. But unhappily, a month afterwards, retiring at night from his uncle's chamber, he left the door open behind him: the old man tore his will, and being then perceptibly declining, for want of time to deliberate, left his money to a trading company.

When female minds are imbittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendance of domestic trifles. Eriphile4 has employed her eloquence for twenty years upon the degeneracy of servants, the nastiness of her house, the ruin of her furniture, the difficulty of preserving tapestry from the moths, and the carelesness of the sluts whom she employs in brushing it. It is her business every morning to visit all the rooms, in hopes of finding a chair without its cover, a window shut or open contrary to her orders, a spot on the hearth, or a feather on the floor, that the rest of the day may be justifiably spent in taunts of contempt, and vociferations of anger. She lives for no other purpose but to preserve the neatness of a house and gardens, and feels neither inclination to pleasure,l nor aspiration after virtue, while she is engrossed by the great employment of keeping gravel from grass, and wainscot from dust. Of three amiablem nieces she has declared herself an irreconcileable enemy to one, because she broke off a tulip with her hoop; to another, because she spilt her coffee on a turkey carpet; and to the third, because she let a wet dog run into the parlour. She has broken off her intercourse of visits, because company makes a house dirty; and resolves to confine herself more to her own affairs, and to live no longer in mire by foolish lenity.n

Peevishness is generally the vice of narrow minds, and, except when it is the effect of anguish and disease, by which the resolution is broken, and the mind made too feeble to bear the lightest addition to its miseries, proceeds from an unreasonable persuasion of the importance of trifles. The proper remedyo against it is, to considerp the dignity of human nature, andq the folly of suffering perturbation and uneasiness from causesr unworthy of our notice.

He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted by fortuitous inadvertencies, ors offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitute the chief praise of a wise man.

The province of prudence lies between the greatest things and the least; some surpass our power by their magnitude, and some escape our notice by their number and their frequency. But the indispensable business of lifet will afford sufficient exercise to every understanding; and such is the limitation of the human powers, that by attention to trifles we must let things of importance pass unobserved: when we examine a mite with a glass, we see nothing but a mite.

That it is every man's interest to be pleased, will need little proof: that it is his interest to please others, experience will inform him. It is therefore not lessu necessary to happiness than tov virtue, that he rid his mind of passions which make him uneasy to himself, and hateful to the world, which enchain his intellects, and obstruct his improvement.

I know not whether it is always a proof of innocence to treat censure with contempt. Wea owe so much reverence to the wisdomb of mankind, as justlyc to wish, that our own opinion of our merit may be ratified by the concurrence of other suffrages; andd since guilt and infamy must have the same effect upon intelligences unable to pierce beyond external appearance, and influenced often rather by example than precept, wee are obliged to refute a false charge, lest we should countenance the crime which we have never committed. To turn away from an accusation with supercilious silence, is equally in the power of him that is hardened by villainy, andf inspirited by innocence. The wall of brass which Horace erects upong a clear conscience,1 may be sometimes raised by impudence or power; and we should always wish to preserve the dignity of virtue by adorning her with graces which wickedness cannot assume.

For this reason I have determined no longer to endure, with either patient or sullen resignation, a reproach,h which is, at least in my opinion, unjust;i but will lay my case honestly before you, that you or your readers may at length decide it.

Whether you will be able to preserve your boasted impartiality, when you hear, that I am considered as an adversary by half the female world, you may surely pardon me for doubting, notwithstanding the veneration to whichj you may imagine yourself entitled by your age, your learning, your abstraction, or your virtue. Beauty, Mr. Rambler, has often overpowered the resolutions of the firm, and the reasonings of the wise, roused the old to sensibility, and subdued the rigorous to softness.

I am one of those unhappy beings, who havek been marked out as husbandsl for many different women, and deliberated a hundred times on the brink of matrimony. I havem discussed all the nuptial preliminaries so often, that I can repeat the forms in which jointures are settled, pin-money secured, and provisions for younger children ascertained; but amn at last doomed by general consent to everlasting solitude, ando excluded by an irreversible decree from all hopes of connubial felicity. I am pointedp out by every mother, as a man whose visits cannot be admitted without reproach; who raises hopes only to embitter disappointment, and makes offers only to seduce girls into a waste of that part of life, in which they might gain advantageous matches, and become mistresses and mothers.

I hope you will think, that some part of this penal severity may justly be remitted, when I inform you, that I never yet professed love to a woman without sincere intentions of marriage; that I have never continued an appearance of intimacy from the hour that my inclination changed, but to preserve her whom I was leaving from the shock of abruptness, or the ignominy of contempt; that I always endeavoured to give the ladies an opportunity of seeming to discard me; and that I never forsook a mistress for larger fortune, or brighter beauty, but because I discovered some irregularity in her conduct, or some depravity in her mind; not because I was charmed by another, but because I was offended by herself.

I was very early tired of that succession of amusements by which the thoughts of most young men are dissipated,q and had not long glittered in the splendour of an ample patrimony before I wished for the calmr of domestick happiness. Youth is naturally delighted with sprightliness and ardour, and therefore I breathed out the sighs of my first affection at the feet of the gay, the sparkling, the vivacious Ferocula. Is fancied to myself a perpetual source of happiness in wit never exhausted, and spirit never depressed; looked with veneration on her readiness of expedients, contempt of difficulty, assurance of address, and promptitude of reply; considered her as exempt by some prerogative of nature from the weakness and timidity of female minds; and congratulated myself upon a companion superior to allt common troubles and embarrassments.u I was, indeed, somewhat disturbed by the unshaken perseverance with which she enforced her demands of an unreasonable settlement; yet Iv should have consented to pass my life in union with her,w had not my curiosity led me to a croud gathered in the street, where I found Ferocula, in the presence of hundreds, disputing for six-pence with ax chairman. I saw her in so little need of assistance, that it was no breach of the laws of chivalry to forbear interposition, and I spared myselfy the shame of owning her acquaintance. I forgot some point of ceremony at our next interview, and soon provoked her to forbid me her presence.

My next attempt was upon a lady of great eminence for learning and philosophy. I had frequently observed the barrenness and uniformity of connubial conversation, and therefore thought highly of my own prudence and discernment when I selected from a multitude of wealthy beauties, the deep-read Misothea, who declared herself the inexorable enemy of ignorant pertness, and puerile levity; and scarcely condescended to make tea, but for the linguist, the geometrician, the astronomer, or the poet. The queen of the Amazons was only to be gained by the hero who could conquer her in single combat; and Misothea's heart was only to bless the scholar who could overpower her by disputation. Amidst the fondest transports of courtship she could call for a definition of terms, and treated every argument with contempt that could not be reduced to regular syllogism. You may easily imagine, that I wished this courtship at an end; but when I desired her to shorten my torments, and fix the day of my felicity, we were led into a long conversation, in which Misothea endeavoured to demonstrate the folly of attributing choice and self-direction to any human being. It was not difficult to discover the danger of committing myself for ever to the arms of one who might at any time mistake the dictates of passion, or the calls of appetite, for the decree of fate; or consider cuckoldom as necessary to the general system, asz a link in the everlasting chain of successive causes. I therefore told her, that destiny had ordained us to part; and that nothing should have torn me from her but the talons of necessity.

I then solicited the regard of the calm, the prudent, the oeconomical Sophronia, a lady who considered wit as dangerous, and learning as superfluous; and thought that the woman who kept her house clean, and her accounts exact, took receipts for every payment, and could find them at a sudden call, enquired nicely after the condition of the tenants, read the price of stocks once a week, and purchased every thing at the best market, could want no accomplishments necessary to the happiness of a wise man. She discoursed with great solemnity on the care and vigilance which the superintendence of a family demands; observed how many were ruined by confidence in servants; and told me, that she never expected honesty but from a strong chest, and that the best storekeeper was the mistress's eye. Many such oracles of generosity she uttered, and made every day new improvements in her schemes for thea regulation of her servants, and the distribution of her time. I was convinced, that whatever I might suffer from Sophronia, I should escape poverty; and we therefore proceeded to adjust the settlements according to her own rule,b “fair and softly.” But one morning her maid came to me in tears to intreat my interest for a reconciliation to her mistress, who had turned her out at night for breaking six teeth in a tortoise-shell comb: she had attended her lady from a distant province, and having not lived long enough to save much money, was destitute among strangers, and though of a good family, in danger of perishing in the streets, or of being compelled by hunger to prostitution. I made no scruple of promising to restore her; but upon my first application to Sophronia was answered with an air which called for approbation, that if she neglected her own affairs, I might suspect her of neglecting mine; that the comb stood her in three half-crowns; that no servant should wrong her twice; and that indeed, she took the first opportunity of parting with Phyllida, because, though she was honest, her constitution was bad, and she thought her very likely to fall sick. Of our conference I need not tell you the effect; it surely may be forgiven me, if on this occasion I forgot the decency of common forms.

From two more ladies I was disengaged by finding, that they entertained my rivals at the same time, and determined their choice by the liberality of our settlements. Another I thought myself justified in forsaking, because she gave my attorney a bribe to favour her in the bargain; another, because I could never soften her to tenderness, till she heard that most of my family had died young; and another, because to encrease her fortune by expectations,c she represented her sister as languishing and consumptive.

I shall in another letter2 give the remaining part of my history of courtship. I presume that I shouldd hitherto have injured the majesty of female virtue, had I not hoped to transfer my affection to higher merit.

From the same principle, tending yet more to degeneracy and corruption, proceeds the desire of investing lawful authority with terror, and governing by force rather than persuasion. Pride is unwilling to believe the necessity of assigning any other reason than her own will; and would rather maintain the most equitable claims by violence and penalties, than descend from the dignity of command to disputea and expostulation.b

It may, I think, be suspected, that this political arrogancec has sometimes found its way into legislative assemblies, and mingled with deliberations upon property and life. A slight perusal of the laws by which the measures of vindictive and coercive justice are established, will discover so many disproportions between crimes and punishments, such capricious distinctions of guilt, and such confusion of remissness and severity, as can scarcely be believed to have been produced by publick wisdom, sincerely and calmly studious of publick happiness.

The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates, that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, “Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?”2 Ond the days when the prisons of this city are emptied into the grave, lete every spectator of the dreadful processionf put the sameg question to his own heart. Fewh among those that croud in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps withi triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human misery, would thenj be able to return without horror and dejection.k For, who can congratulate himself upon a life passed without some act more mischievous to the peace or prosperity of others, than the theft of a piece of money?