men will always be tempted to deviate from their duty, and will, therefore, always want a monitor to recall them; and a new book often feizes the attention of the publick, without any other claim than that it is new. There is likewife in compofition,. as in other things a perpetual viciffitude of fashion; and truth is recommended at one time to regard, by appearances which at another would expofe it to neglect; the author, therefore, who has judgment to difcern the taste of his contemporaries, and skill to gratify it, will have always an opportunity to deferve well of mankind, by conveying inftruction to them in a grateful vehicle.

There are likewife many modes of compofition, by which a moralift may deferve the name of an original writer: he may familiarife his fyftem by dialogues after the manner of the ancients, or fubtilize it into a series of fyllogiftic arguments: he may enforce his doctrine by seriousness and folemnity, or enliven it by fprightlinefs and gaiety; he may deliver his fentiments in naked precepts, or illuftrate them by hiftorical examples; he may detain the studious by the artful concatenation of a continued discourse, or relieve the busy by short strictures, and unconnected effays.

To excel in any of thefe forms of writing will require a particular cultivation of the genius; whoever can attain to excellence, will be certain to engage a fet of readers, whom no other method would have equally allured; and he that communicates truth with fuccefs, must be numbered among the firft benefac tors to mankind.

The fame obfervation may be extended likewise to the paffions: their influence is uniform, and their effects nearly the fame in every human breast: a man loves and hates, defires and avoids, exactly like his neighbour; refentment and ambition, avarice and indolence, discover themselves by the fame symptoms in minds diftant a thousand years from

one another.

Nothing, therefore, can be more unjuft, than to charge an author with plagiarifm, merely because he affigns to every caufe its natural effect; and makes his perfonages act, as others in like circumstances have always done. There are conceptions in which all men will agree, though each derives them from his own obfervation: whoever has been in love, will reprefent a lover impatient of every idea that interrupts his meditations on his mistress, retiring to fhades and folitude, that he may mufe without disturbance on his approaching happiness, or affociating himself with fome friend that flatters his pasfion, and talking away the hours of abfence upon his darling fubject. Whoever has been fo unhapp as to have felt the miferies of long-continued hatred, will, without any affiftance from ancient volumes, be able to relate how the paffions are kept in perpetual agitation, by the recollection of injury and meditations of revenge; how the blood boils at the name of the enemy, and life is worn away in contrivances of mischief.

Every other paffion is alike fimple and limited, if it be confidered only with regard to the breaft which it inhabits; the anatomy of the mind, as that of

the

the body, muft perpetually exhibit the fame appearances; and though by the continued induftry of fucceffive inquirers, new movements will be from time to time difcovered, they can affect only the minuter parts, and are commonly of more curiofity than importance.

It will now be natural to inquire, by what arts are the writers of the prefent and future ages to attract the notice and favour of mankind. They are to obferve the alterations which time is always making in the modes of life, that they may gratify every generation with a picture of themselves. Thus love is uniform, but courtship is perpetually varying the different arts of gallantry, which beauty has infpired, would of themselves be fufficient to fill a volume; fometimes balls and ferenades, fometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been fenfible of fcarce any other merit than that of riches, and liftened only to jointures and pin-money. Thus the ambitious man has at all times been eager of wealth and power; but thefe hopes have been gratified in fome countries by fupplicating the people, and in others by flattering the prince: honour in fome ftates has been only the reward of military achievements, in others it has been gained by noify turbulence and popular clamours. Avarice has worn a different form, as fhe actuated the ufurer of Rome, and the stockjobber of England; and idleness itfelf, how little foever inclined to the trouble of invention, has been forced from time to time to change its amufe-.

ments,

ments, and contrive different methods of wearing out the day.

Here then is the fund, from which thofe who study mankind may fill their compofitions with an inexhaustible variety of images and allufions: and he muft be confeffed to look with little attention upon fcenes thus perpetually changing, who cannot catch fome of the figures before they are made vulgar by reiterated defcriptions.

It has been difcovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the diftinct and primogenial colours are only feven; but every eye can witnefs, that from various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diverfifications of tints may be produced. In like manner, the paffions of the mind, which put the world in motion, and produce all the buftle and eagerness of the bufy crowds that fwarm upon the earth; the paffions, from whence arife all the pleafures and pains that we fee and hear of, if we analyse the mind of man, are very few; but thofe few agitated and combined, as external caufes fhall happen to operate, and modified by prevailing opinions and accidental caprices, make fuch frequent alterations on the fuface of life, that the fhow, while we are bufied in delineating it, vanishes from the view, and a new set of objects fucceed, doomed to the fame fhortnefs of duration with the former: thus curiofity may always find employment, and the bufy part of mankind will furnish the contemplative with the materials of fpeculation to the end of time.

The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are pre-occupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance

ignorance or idleness, by which fome difcourage others and fome themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.

NUMB. 99. TUESDAY, October 16, 1753.

-Magnis tamen excidit aufis.

But in the glorious enterprize he dy'd.

OVID.

ADDISON.

T has always been the practice of mankind, to

judge of actions by the event. The fame attempts, conducted in the fame manner, but terminated by different fuccefs, produce different judgments: they who attain their wishes, never want celebrators of their wisdom and their virtue; and they that mifcarry, are quickly discovered to have been defective not only in mental but in moral qualities. The world will never be long without fome good reafon to hate the unhappy: their real faults are immediately detected; and if thofe are not fufficient to fink theni into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be fuperadded: he that fails in his endeavours after wealth or power, will not long retain either honefty

or courage.

This fpecies of injuftice has fo long prevailed in univerfal practice, that it feems likewife to have in

feted