How his youth was spent in play, &c. How he became very wild, as he came to years of discretion. How he formed some bad connections, and saw many troubles. How he ran away with a young gipsy-wench. How he came up to London, and found many rich relations. How he forsook the gipsy-wench, and carried about a market-girl to all the public places. How he made a great noise, and kicked up a great dust. How he took part in many dirty occupations. How successful he was in haranguing the popu lace, and commanding attention. How he was loaded with more employment than. he could bear. How he raised his hopes to the woolsack. How he was promised a stall for his brother, and the Order of the Thistle for himself; and how he was turned out of place without any provision. How he was bribed to hold his tongue by a lady in the straw. How he lay in clover for three years. How he grew very amorous, and how the queen's zebra was talked of. How he was bought and sold by people in power. How he put on a lion's skin, and grew very for midable. How he turned tail, on being pulled by the ears. How he sat upon thorns. How he was turned out of place, fell again into obscurity, died, and left all he possessed among his natural children. I shall conclude my paper of to-day with a little conversation in the shades below, between a modern biographer and a kennel-scraper, in imitation of Mr. Fontenelle's fourth dialogue, between Anacreon and Aristotle. BIOGRAPHER. I never should have imagined that a vile kennelscraper could have the effrontery to compare his occupation on earth to the dignified task of the biographer. KENNEL-SCRAPER. You make a great bustle about the dignity of a biographer; but I should be glad to be informed on what circumstance, except the Greek origin of your name, you can found your claim to superiority. BIOGRAPHER. I desire, sir, first of all, to know what pretensions your office on earth has given you to challenge an equal honour with a man who has employed his talents for the entertainment and instruction of mankind. KENNEL-SCRAPER. The point of utility I can very boldly assert; and I see no reason to blush in your presence, if the dignity of our trades be made the question. I think, sir, with submission, that my old nails and broken horse-shoes are discoveries as valuable to the world, as those scraps and shreds of immorality, impertinence, and prostitution, you were so earnestly employed in collecting. Is it not of more consequence to the community that one industrious man gets his bread in peace, than that fifty names and follies should be supported by the pains of the biographer? And as to dignity, I maintain that to rake up the trash and rubbish of a noisy fellow's history, and wait upon his memory backwards and forwards, from the gaming-house to the brothel, is the most degrading office in the world; and sooner than have any hand in such a business, I would have them both immersed a whole day in the most pestilential abyss in his majesty's three dominions. BIOGRAPHER. You make no distinctions between the different orders and degrees in which biographers may be classed. Your intellect is as muddy as your occupation. You will not surely rank yourself with Plutarch, and with geniuses of a similar order in our own country. KENNEL-SCRAPER. Pardon me, sir; my business was always to separate and select. I wish to be understood to speak only of the latest biographers. I have a very proper respect for those great men to whom you allude; and I observe that they have enough for themselves, to keep as distant from you as possible; for in yonder meadow, covered with the bloom of the amaranth, and intersected with amber streams, I can discern the venerable Plutarch, surrounded by a set of heroes and philosophers, who strive with each other in their testimonies of gratitude and esteem. N° 12. TUESDAY, APRIL 17. Est mollis flamma medullas Interea, et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus. A gentle fire she feeds within her veins, VIRGIL. DRYDEN. My good-natured readers will pardon me if sometimes I discover the vanity of a grey-headed man in speaking of these papers, which I consider in a manner as my grandchildren. When I take my usual saunter in our little filbert-walk, before our old lady summons me to breakfast, I am tempted, I own, to make a comparison between the gradual opening of my plan in these essays, and the lively progress of vegetation at this cherishing time of the year. The same kindling influence which unfolds the bud, and spreads out the blossom, seems also to impart a sort of growth to my fancy, and to fructify within me every germ of thought, of feeling, and of affec tion. Now turning from the wintry signs, the Sun To glad the ground, and paint the fields with flowers; And buds that yet the blast of Eurus fear Stand at the door of life, and doubt to clothe the year; Till gentle heat, and soft repeated rains, Make their green blood to dance within their veins; Without these physical aids of fine weather, and the sort of renovation which the spring seems to produce in me, I do not know how such a little frosty old fellow as myself could ever find sufficient animation in his bosom to give my fair countrywomen a chapter upon love. It is almost impossible, indeed, amidst this universal " passion of the groves," when every feathered songster is warbling out his sweet pain, and every sprig is conscious of the double weight of some newly-wedded pair-it is almost impossible, I say, for a heart that is disengaged from low pursuits and pleasures, not to yield to these gentle sympathies and gay emotions. It was at this season of the year, when the honeysuckle sends forth new shoots, and the bosom new desires; when the passions feel a fresh impulse towards their object, and the ivy embraces the elm anew; that my mother used to make her strongest efforts to persuade. me to marry. That the Olive-branch family should become extinct after me, was a thought which she never could dwell upon- without uneasiness; and I really would have married fifty times over, to have spared her this pain, but that my little pinched-up, mummylike figure would never let me think of matrimony without shame and confusion. Besides which, after my poor friend Eugenio's death, after he had breathed out on my breast his last hope and his last sorrow, all my care and assistance were wanting to console the virtuous Amelia, who survived her lover about ten years, and then died a virgin, in purest |