Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum,
Multa recedentes adimunt.---- HOR. De Ar. Poet. 175.
The blessings flowing in with life's full tide,
Down with our ebb of life decreasing glide. FRANCIS.
BAXTER, in the narrative of his own life, has
enumerated several opinions, which, though he
thought them evident and incontestable at his first
entrance into the world, time and experience
disposed him to change.
Whoever reviews the state of his own mind from
the dawn of manhood to its decline, and considers
what he pursued or dreaded, slighted or esteemed,
at different periods of his age, will have no reason
to imagine such changes of sentiment peculiar to
any station or character. Every man, however careless
and inattentive, has conviction forced upon
him; the lectures of time obtrude themselves upon
the most unwilling or dissipated auditor; and,
by comparing our past with our present thoughts,
we perceive that we have changed our minds,
though perhaps we cannot discover when the
alteration happened, or by what causes it was
produced.
This revolution of sentiments occasions a
perpetual contest between the old and young. They
who imagine themselves entitled to veneration by
the prerogative of longer life, are inclined to treat
the notions of those whose conduct they superintend
with superciliousness and contempt, for want of
considering that the future and the past have different
appearances; that the disproportion will always be
great between expectation and enjoyment, between
new possession and satiety; that the truth of many
maxims of age gives too little pleasure to be allowed
till it is felt; and that the miseries of life would be
increased beyond all human power of endurance, if
we were to enter the world with the same opinions
as we carry from it.
We naturally indulge those ideas that please us.
Hope will predominate in every mind, till it has
been suppressed by frequent disappointments. The
youth has not yet discovered how many evils are
continually hovering about us, and when he is set
free from the shackles of discipline, looks abroad
into the world with rapture; he sees an elysian
region open before him, so variegated with beauty,
and so stored with pleasure, that his care is rather
to accumulate good, than to shun evil; he stands
distracted by different forms of delight, and has no
other doubt, than which path to follow of those
which all lead equally to the bowers of happiness.
He who has seen only the superficies of life
believes everything to be what it appears, and rarely
suspects that external splendour conceals any latent
sorrow or vexation. He never imagines that there
may be greatness without safety, affluence without
content, jollity without friendship, and solitude without
peace. He fancies himself permitted to cull the
blessings of every condition, and to leave its
inconveniences to the idle and the ignorant. He is
inclined to believe no man miserable but by his own
fault, and seldom looks with much pity upon failings
or miscarriages, because he thinks them willingly
admitted, or negligently incurred.
It is impossible, without pity and contempt, to
hear a youth of generous sentiments and warm
imagination, declaring, in the moment of openness and
confidence, his designs and expectations; because
long life is possible, he considers it as certain, and
therefore promises himself all the changes of happiness,
and provides gratifications for every desire.
He is, for a time, to give himself wholly to frolick
and diversion, to range the world in search of
pleasure, to delight every eye, to gain every heart, and
to be celebrated equally for his pleasing levities and
solid attainments, his deep reflections and his sparkling
repartees. He then elevates his views to nobler
enjoyments, and finds all the scattered excellencies
of the female world united in a woman, who prefers
his addresses to wealth and titles; he is afterwards
to engage in business, to dissipate difficulty, and
overpower opposition: to climb, by the mere force
of merit, to fame and greatness; and reward all those
who countenanced his rise, or paid due regard to
his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace
and honour; contract his views to domestick pleasures;
form the manners of children like himself;
observe how every year expands the beauty of his
daughters, and how his sons catch ardour from their
father's history; he will give laws to the neighbourhood;
dictate axioms to posterity; and leave the
world an example of wisdom and happiness.
With hopes like these, he sallies jocund into life;
to little purpose is he told, that the condition of
humanity admits no pure and unmingled happiness;
that the exuberant gaiety of youth ends in poverty
or disease; that uncommon qualifications and
contrarieties of excellence, produce envy equally with
applause; that whatever admiration and fondness
may promise him, he must marry a wife like the
wives of others, with some virtues and some faults,
and be as often disgusted by her vices, as delighted
by her elegance; that if he adventures into the circle
of action, he must expect to encounter men as
artful, as daring, as resolute as himself; that of his
children, some may be deformed, and others vicious;
some may disgrace him by their follies, some offend
him by their insolence, and some exhaust him by
their profusion. He hears all this with obstinate
incredulity, and wonders by what malignity old age
is influenced, that it cannot forbear to fill his ears
with predictions of misery.
Among other pleasing errours of young minds,
is the opinion of their own importance. He that has
not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries
can spare from their own affairs, conceives
all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines every
one that approaches him to be an enemy or a
follower, an admirer or a spy. He therefore considers
his fame as involved in the event of every action.
Many of the virtues and vices of youth proceed
from this quick sense of reputation. This it is that
gives firmness and constancy, fidelity, and disinterestedness,
and it is this that kindles resentment for
slight injuries, and dictates all the principles of
sanguinary honour.
But as time brings him forward into the world,
he soon discovers that he only shares fame or reproach
with innumerable partners; that he is left
unmarked in the obscurity of the crowd; and that
what he does, whether good or bad, soon gives way
to new objects of regard. He then easily sets
himself free from the anxieties of reputation, and
considers praise or censure as a transient breath, which,
while he hears it, is passing away, without any
lasting mischief or advantage.
In youth, it is common to measure right and
wrong by the opinion of the world, and, in age, to
act without any measure but interest, and to lose
shame without substituting virtue.
Such is the condition of life, that something is
always wanting to happiness. In youth, we have
warm hopes, which are soon blasted by rashness and
negligence, and great designs, which are defeated
by inexperience. In age, we have knowledge and
prudence without spirit to exert, or motives to
prompt them; we are able to plan schemes and
regulate measures, but have not time remaining to
bring them to completion.