humility necessary to avert the glance of envy, and therefore told me,
with an air of soft composure, that I was not to estimate life by
external appearance, that all these shining acquisitions had added
little to his happiness, that he still remembered with pleasure the days
in which he and I were upon the level, and had often, in the moment of
reflection, been doubtful, whether he should lose much by changing his
condition for mine.
I began now to be afraid lest his pride should, by silence and
submission be emboldened to insults that could not easily be borne, and
therefore coolly considered, how I should repress it without such
bitterness of reproof as I was yet unwilling to use. But he interrupted
my meditation, by asking leave to be dressed, and told me, that he had
promised to attend some ladies in the park, and, if I was going the same
way, would take me in his chariot. I had no inclination to any other
favours, and therefore left him without any intention of seeing him
again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding.
I am, &c.
ASPER.
Though I am not wholly insensible of the provocations which my
correspondent has received, I cannot altogether commend the keenness of
his resentment, nor encourage him to persist in his resolution of
breaking off all commerce with his old acquaintance. One of the golden
precepts of Pythagoras directs, that _a friend should not be hated for
little faults_; and surely he, upon whom nothing worse can be charged,
than that he mats his stairs, and covers his carpet, and sets out his
finery to show before those whom he does not admit to use it, has yet
committed nothing that should exclude him from common degrees of
kindness. Such improprieties often proceed rather from stupidity than
malice. Those who thus shine only to dazzle, are influenced merely by
custom and example, and neither examine, nor are qualified to examine,
the motives of their own practice, or to state the nice limits between
elegance and ostentation. They are often innocent of the pain which
their vanity produces, and insult others when they have no worse purpose
than to please themselves.
He that too much refines his delicacy will always endanger his quiet. Of
those with whom nature and virtue oblige us to converse, some are
ignorant of the art of pleasing, and offend when they design to caress;
some are negligent, and gratify themselves without regard to the quiet
of another; some, perhaps, are malicious, and feel no greater
satisfaction in prosperity, than that of raising envy and trampling
inferiority. But, whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to
overlook it, for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is
punished by neglect[m].
[Footnote m: Garrick's little vanities are recognized by all in the
character of Prospero. Mr. Boswell informs us, that he never forgave its
pointed satire. On the same authority we are assured, that though
Johnson so dearly loved to ridicule his pupil, yet he so habitually
considered him as his own property, that he would permit no one beside
to hold up his weaknesses to derision.]
No. 201. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1752.
--_Sanctus haberi
Justitiæque tenat factis dictisque mereris,
Adnosco procerem_. JUV. Sat. Lib. viii. 24.
Convince the world that you're devout and true;
Be just in all you say, and all you do;
Whatever be your birth, you're sure to be
A peer of the first magnitude to me. STEPNEY.
Boyle has observed, that the excellency of manufactures, and the
facility of labour, would be much promoted, if the various expedients
and contrivances which lie concealed in private hands, were by
reciprocal communications made generally known; for there are few
operations that are not performed by one or other with some peculiar
advantages, which, though singly of little importance, would, by
conjunction and concurrence, open new inlets to knowledge, and give new
powers to diligence.
There are, in like manner, several moral excellencies distributed among
the different classes of a community. It was said by Cujacius, that he
never read more than one book by which he was not instructed; and he
that shall inquire after virtue with ardour and attention, will seldom
find a man by whose example or sentiments he may not be improved.
Every profession has some essential and appropriate virtue, without
which there can be no hope of honour or success, and which, as it is
more or less cultivated, confers within its sphere of activity different
degrees of merit and reputation. As the astrologers range the
subdivisions of mankind under the planets which they suppose to
influence their lives, the moralist may distribute them according to the
virtues which they necessarily practise, and consider them as
distinguished by prudence or fortitude, diligence or patience.
So much are the modes of excellence settled by time and place, that men
may be heard boasting in one street of that which they would anxiously
conceal in another. The grounds of scorn and esteem, the topicks of
praise and satire, are varied according to the several virtues or vices
which the course of life has disposed men to admire or abhor; but he who
is solicitous for his own improvement, must not be limited by local
reputation, but select from every tribe of mortals their
characteristical virtues, and constellate in himself the scattered
graces which shine single in other men.
The chief praise to which a trader aspires is that of punctuality, or an
exact and rigorous observance of commercial engagements; nor is there
any vice of which he so much dreads the imputation, as of negligence and
instability. This is a quality which the interest of mankind requires to
be diffused through all the ranks of life, but which many seem to
consider as a vulgar and ignoble virtue, below the ambition of greatness
or attention of wit, scarcely requisite among men of gaiety and spirit,
and sold at its highest rate when it is sacrificed to a frolick or a
jest.
Every man has daily occasion to remark what vexations arise from this
privilege of deceiving one another. The active and vivacious have so
long disdained the restraints of truth, that promises and appointments
have lost their cogency, and both parties neglect their stipulations,
because each concludes that they will be broken by the other.
Negligence is first admitted in small affairs, and strengthened by petty
indulgences. He that is not yet hardened by custom, ventures not on the
violation of important engagements, but thinks himself bound by his word
in cases of property or danger, though he allows himself to forget at
what time he is to meet ladies in the park, or at what tavern his
friends are expecting him.
This laxity of honour would be more tolerable, if it could be restrained
to the play-house, the ball-room, or the card-table; yet even there it
is sufficiently troublesome, and darkens those moments with expectation,
suspense, and resentment, which are set aside for pleasure, and from
which we naturally hope for unmingled enjoyment, and total relaxation.
But he that suffers the slightest breach in his morality, can seldom
tell what shall enter it, or how wide it shall be made; when a passage
is open, the influx of corruption is every moment wearing down
opposition, and by slow degrees deluges the heart.
Aliger entered the world a youth of lively imagination, extensive views,
and untainted principles. His curiosity incited him to range from place
to place, and try all the varieties of conversation; his elegance of
address and fertility of ideas gained him friends wherever he appeared;
or at least he found the general kindness of reception always shown to a
young man whose birth and fortune give him a claim to notice, and who
has neither by vice nor folly destroyed his privileges. Aliger was
pleased with this general smile of mankind, and was industrious to
preserve it by compliance and officiousness, but did not suffer his
desire of pleasing to vitiate his integrity. It was his established
maxim, that a promise is never to be broken; nor was it without long
reluctance that he once suffered himself to be drawn away from a festal
engagement by the importunity of another company.
He spent the evening, as is usual in the rudiments of vice, in
perturbation and imperfect enjoyment, and met his disappointed friends
in the morning with confusion and excuses. His companions, not
accustomed to such scrupulous anxiety, laughed at his uneasiness,
compounded the offence for a bottle, gave him courage to break his word
again, and again levied the penalty. He ventured the same experiment
upon another society, and found them equally ready to consider it as a
venial fault, always incident to a man of quickness and gaiety; till, by
degrees, he began to think himself at liberty to follow the last
invitation, and was no longer shocked at the turpitude of falsehood. He
made no difficulty to promise his presence at distant places, and if
listlessness happened to creep upon him, would sit at home with great
tranquillity, and has often sunk to sleep in a chair, while he held ten
tables in continual expectations of his entrance.
It was so pleasant to live in perpetual vacancy, that he soon dismissed
his attention as an useless incumbrance, and resigned himself to
carelessness and dissipation, without any regard to the future or the
past, or any other motive of action than the impulse of a sudden desire,
or the attraction of immediate pleasure. The absent were immediately
forgotten, and the hopes or fears felt by others, had no influence upon
his conduct. He was in speculation completely just, but never kept his
promise to a creditor; he was benevolent, but always deceived those
friends whom he undertook to patronise or assist; he was prudent, but
suffered his affairs to be embarrassed for want of regulating his
accounts at stated times. He courted a young lady, and when the
settlements were drawn, took a ramble into the country on the day
appointed to sign them. He resolved to travel, and sent his chests on
shipboard, but delayed to follow them till he lost his passage. He was
summoned as an evidence in a cause of great importance, and loitered on
the way till the trial was past. It is said that when he had, with great
expense, formed an interest in a borough, his opponent contrived, by
some agents who knew his temper, to lure him away on the day of
election.
His benevolence draws him into the commission of a thousand crimes,
which others less kind or civil would escape. His courtesy invites
application; his promises produce dependence; he has his pockets filled
with petitions, which he intends some time to deliver and enforce, and
his table covered with letters of request, with which he purposes to
comply; but time slips imperceptibly away, while he is either idle or
busy; his friends lose their opportunities, and charge upon him their
miscarriages and calamities.
This character, however contemptible, is not peculiar to Aliger. They
whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of
expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make
all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship,
obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest
of those that persist in their resolutions, execute what they design,
and perform what they have promised.
No. 202. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1752.
[Greek: Pros apanta deilos estin o penaes pragmata,
Kai pantas autou kataphronein upolambanei
O de metrios pratton periskegesteron
Apanta t aniara, dampria, phepei.] CALLIMACHUS.
From no affliction is the poor exempt,
He thinks each eye surveys him with contempt;
Unmanly poverty subdues the heart,
Cankers each wound, and sharpen's[1] ev'ry dart. F. LEWIS.
[1] Transcriber's note: sic.
Among those who have endeavoured to promote learning, and rectify
judgment, it has been long customary to complain of the abuse of words,
which are often admitted to signify things so different, that, instead
of assisting the understanding as vehicles of knowledge, they produce
errour, dissention, and perplexity, because what is affirmed in one
sense, is received in another.
If this ambiguity sometimes embarrasses the most solemn controversies,
and obscures the demonstrations of science, it may well be expected to
infest the pompous periods of declaimers, whose purpose is often only to
amuse with fallacies, and change the colours of truth and falsehood; or
the musical compositions of poets, whose style is professedly
figurative, and whose art is imagined to consist in distorting words
from their original meaning.
There are few words of which the reader believes himself better to know
the import, than of _poverty_; yet, whoever studies either the poets or
philosophers, will find such an account of the condition expressed by
that term as his experience or observation will not easily discover to
be true. Instead of the meanness, distress, complaint, anxiety, and
dependance, which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of poverty,
he will read of content, innocence, and cheerfulness, of health and
safety, tranquillity and freedom; of pleasures not known but to men
unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that sheds his balsamick
anodynes only on the cottage. Such are the blessings to be obtained by
the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from their thrones,
and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber undisturbed in the
elysium of poverty.
If these authors do not deceive us, nothing can be more absurd than that
perpetual contest for wealth which keeps the world in commotion; nor any
complaints more justly censured than those which proceed from want of
the gifts of fortune, which we are taught by the great masters of moral
wisdom to consider as golden shackles, by which the wearer is at once
disabled and adorned; as luscious poisons which may for a time please
the palate, but soon betray their malignity by languor and by pain. It
is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful
without physick, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty
of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the
help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
But it will be found upon a nearer view, that they who extol the
happiness of poverty, do not mean the same state with those who deplore
its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of
magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of
empires, or to contrive forms of lamentations, for monarchs in distress,
rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty, who make no
approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor, in the epick language,
is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have fleets and
armies in pay.
Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that
wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate, easily gratifies his
ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by
boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys.
He who would shew the extent of his views, and grandeur of his
conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and
magnificence, may talk like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet
obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniencies of
superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred
pounds a year; a fortune, indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with
the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a
philosopher to affix the name of poverty, since no man can, with any
propriety, be termed poor, who does not see the greater part of mankind
richer than himself.
As little is the general condition of human life understood by the
panegyrists and historians, who amuse us with accounts of the poverty of
heroes and sages. Riches are of no value in themselves, their use is
discovered only in that which they procure. They are not coveted, unless
by narrow understandings, which confound the means with the end, but for
the sake of power, influence, and esteem; or, by some of less elevated
and refined sentiments, as necessary to sensual enjoyment.
The pleasures of luxury, many have, without uncommon virtue, been able
to despise, even when affluence and idleness have concurred to tempt
them; and therefore he who feels nothing from indigence but the want of
gratifications which he could not in any other condition make consistent
with innocence, has given no proof of eminent patience. Esteem and
influence every man desires, but they are equally pleasing, and equally
valuable, by whatever means they are obtained; and whoever has found the
art of securing them without the help of money, ought, in reality, to be
accounted rich, since he has all that riches can purchase to a wise man.
Cincinnatus, though he lived upon a few acres cultivated by his own
hand, was sufficiently removed from all the evils generally comprehended
under the name of poverty, when his reputation was such, that the voice
of his country called him from his farm to take absolute command into
his hand; nor was Diogenes much mortified by his residence in a tub,
where he was honoured with the visit of Alexander the Great.
The same fallacy has conciliated veneration to the religious orders.
When we behold a man abdicating the hope of terrestrial possessions, and
precluding himself, by an irrevocable vow, from the pursuit and
acquisition of all that his fellow-beings consider as worthy of wishes
and endeavours, we are immediately struck with the purity, abstraction,
and firmness of his mind, and regard him as wholly employed in securing
the interests of futurity, and devoid of any other care than to gain, at
whatever price, the surest passage to eternal rest.
Yet, what can the votary be justly said to have lost of his present
happiness? If he resides in a convent, he converses only with men whose
condition is the same with his own; he has, from the munificence of the
founder, all the necessaries of life, and is safe from that destitution,
which Hooker declares to be "such an impediment to virtue, as, till it
be removed, suffereth not the mind of man to admit any other care." All
temptations to envy and competition are shut out from his retreat; he is
not pained with the sight of unattainable dignity, nor insulted with the
bluster of insolence, or the smile of forced familiarity. If he wanders
abroad, the sanctity of his character amply compensates all other
distinctions; he is seldom seen but with reverence, nor heard but with
submission.
It has been remarked, that death, though often defied in the field,
seldom fails to terrify when it approaches the bed of sickness in its
natural horrour; so poverty may easily be endured, while associated with
dignity and reputation, but will always be shunned and dreaded, when it
is accompanied with ignominy and contempt.
No. 203. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1752.
_Cum volet illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus
Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat avi_. OVID. Met. xv. 873.
Come, soon or late, death's undetermin'd day,
This mortal being only can decay. WELSTED.
It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.
The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with
immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by
recollection or anticipation.
Every one has so often detected the fallaciousness of hope, and the
inconvenience of teaching himself to expect what a thousand accidents
may preclude, that, when time has abated the confidence with which youth
rushes out to take possession of the world, we endeavour, or wish, to
find entertainment in the review of life, and to repose upon real facts,
and certain experience. This is perhaps one reason, among many, why age
delights in narratives.
But so full is the world of calamity, that every source of pleasure is
polluted, and every retirement of tranquillity disturbed. When time has
supplied us with events sufficient to employ our thoughts, it has
mingled them with so many disasters, that we shrink from their
remembrance, dread their intrusion upon our minds, and fly from them as
from enemies that pursue us with torture.
No man past the middle point of life can sit down to feast upon the
pleasures of youth without finding the banquet embittered by the cup of
sorrow; he may revive lucky accidents, and pleasing extravagancies; many
days of harmless frolick, or nights of honest festivity, will perhaps
recur; or, if he has been engaged in scenes of action, and acquainted
with affairs of difficulty and vicissitudes of fortune, he may enjoy the
nobler pleasure of looking back upon distress firmly supported, dangers
resolutely encountered, and opposition artfully defeated. Aeneas
properly comforts his companions, when, after the horrours of a storm,
they have landed on an unknown and desolate country, with the hope that
their miseries will be at some distant time recounted with delight.
There are few higher gratifications, than that of reflection on
surmounted evils, when they are not incurred nor protracted by our
fault, and neither reproach us with cowardice nor guilt.
But this felicity is almost always abated by the reflection that they
with whom we should be most pleased to share it are now in the grave. A
few years make such havock in human generations, that we soon see
ourselves deprived of those with whom we entered the world, and whom the
participation of pleasures or fatigues had endeared to our remembrance.
The man of enterprise recounts his adventures and expedients, but is
forced, at the close of the relation, to pay a sigh to the names of
those that contributed to his success; he that passes his life among the
gayer part of mankind, has his remembrance stored with remarks and
repartees of wits, whose sprightliness and merriment are now lost in
perpetual silence; the trader, whose industry has supplied the want of
inheritance, repines in solitary plenty at the absence of companions,
with whom he had planned out amusements for his latter years; and the
scholar, whose merit, after a long series of efforts, raises him from
obscurity, looks round in vain from his exaltation for his old friends
or enemies, whose applause or mortification would heighten his triumph.
Among Martial's requisites to happiness is, _Res non parta labore, sed
relicta_, "an estate not gained by industry, but left by inheritance."
It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely
obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to
give much delight; yet all human happiness has its defects. Of what we
do not gain for ourselves we have only a faint and imperfect fruition,
because we cannot compare the difference between want and possession, or
at least can derive from it no conviction of our own abilities, nor any
increase of self-esteem; what we acquire by bravery or science, by
mental or corporeal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate,
and, therefore, cannot enjoy it.
Thus every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the
time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age,
we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future
likewise has its limits, which the imagination dreads to approach, but
which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and
companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure;
we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon
lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and
yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven awhile by hope
or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the
shades of death.