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Riches cannot easily be denied to them who have|cious titles, that he never buys a book till its chasomething of greater value to offer in exchange; racter is established; a third wonders what any he whose fortune is endangered by litigation, will man can hope to produce after so many writers not refuse to augment the wealth of the lawyer; of greater eminence; the next has inquired after he whose days are darkened by languor, or whose the author, but can hear no account of him, and nerves are excruciated by pain, is compelled to therefore suspects the name to be fictitious; and pay tribute to the science of healing. But praise another knows him to be a man condemned by may be always omitted without inconvenience. indigence to write too frequently what he does When once a man has made celebrity necessary not understand. to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence, and gratify their malice by quiet neu.. trality. They that could never have injured a character by invectives, may combine to annihilate it by silence; as the women of Rome threatened to put an end to conquest and dominion, by supplying no children to the commonwealth.

Many are the consolations with which the unhappy author endeavours to allay his vexation, and fortify his patience. He has written with too little indulgence to the understanding of common readers; he has fallen upon an age in which solid knowledge, and delicate refinement, have given way to a low merriment, and idle buffoonery, and therefore no writer can hope for distinction, who has any higher purpose than to raise laughter. He finds that his enemies, such as superiority will always raise, have been industrious, while his performance was in the press, to vilify and blast it; and that the bookseller, whom he had resolved to enrich, has rivals that obstruct the circulation of his copies. He at last reposes upon the consideration, that the noblest works of learning and genius have always made their way slowly against ignorance and prejudice; and that reputation, which is never to be lost, must be gradually obtained, as animals of longest life are observed not soon to attain their full sta ture and strength.

When a writer has with long toil produced a work intended to burst upon mankind with unexpected lustre, and withdraw the attention of the learned world from every other controversy or inquiry, he is seldom contented to wait long without the enjoyment of his new praises. With an imagination full of his own importance, he walks out like a monarch in disguise to learn the various opinions of his readers. Prepared to feast upon admiration; composed to encounter censures without emotion; and determined not to suffer his quiet to be injured by a sensibility too exquisite of praise or blame, but to laugh with By such arts of voluntary delusion does every equal contempt at vain objections and injudicious man endeavour to conceal his own unimportance commendations, he enters the places of mingled from himself. It is long before we are convinced conversation, sits down to his tea in an obscure of the small proportion which every individual corner, and while he appears to examine a file bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn of antiquated journals, catches the conversation how few can be interested in the fortune of any of the whole room. He listens, but hears no single man; how little vacancy is left in the world mention of his book, and therefore supposes that for any new object of attention; to how small exhe has disappointed his curiosity by delay; and tent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread that as men of learning would naturally begin amidst the mists of business and of folly; and their conversation with such a wonderful novelty, how soon it is clouded by the intervention of they had digressed to other subjects before his ar- other novelties. Not only the writer of books, rival. The company disperses, and their places but the commander of armies, and the deliverer are supplied by others equally ignorant, or equal- of nations, will easily outlive all noisy and populy careless. The same expectation hurries him lar reputation; he may be celebrated for a time to another place, from which the same disap-by the public voice; but his actions and his name pointment drives him soon away. His impatience then grows violent and tumultuous; he ranges over the town with restless curiosity, and hears in one quarter of a cricket-match, in another of a pickpocket; is told by some of an unexpected It seems not to be sufficiently considered how bankruptcy; by others of a turtle-feast; is some-little renown can be admitted in the world. Mantimes provoked by importunate inquiries after kind are kept perpetually busy by their fears or the white bear, and sometimes with praises of the desires, and have not more leisure from their own dancing-dog; he is afterward entreated to give affairs, than to acquaint themselves with the achis judgment upon a wager about the height of cidents of the current day. Engaged in contriv the Monument; invited to see a foot-race in the ing some refuge from calamity, or in shortening adjacent villages; desired to read a ludicrous ad- the way to some new possession, they seldom vertisement; or consulted about the most effect- suffer their thoughts to wander to the past or fuual method of making inquiry after a favourite ture; none but a few solitary students have leisure cat. The whole world is busied in affairs, which to inquire into the claims of ancient heroes or he thinks below the notice of reasonable crea-sages; and names which hoped to range over tures, and which are nevertheless sufficient to kingdoms and continents, shrink at last into clois withdraw all regard from his labours and his ters or colleges. merits.

He resolves at last to violate his own modesty, and to recall the talkers from their folly by an inquiry after himself. He finds every one provided with an answer; one has seen the work advertised, but never met with any that had read it; another has been so often imposed upon by spe

will soon be considered as remote and unaffecting, and be rarely mentioned but by those whose alliance gives them some vanity to gratify by frequent commemoration.

Nor is it certain, that even of these dark and narrow habitations, these last retreats of fame, the possession will be long kept. Of men de voted to literature, very few extend their views beyond some particular science, and the greater part seldom inquire, even in their own profes Ision, for any authors but those whom the present

mode of study happens to force upon their notice; | ed, disposed me to consider his instructions as they desire not to fill their minds with unfashionable knowledge, but contentedly resign to oblivion those books which they now find censured or neglected.

The hope of fame is necessarily connected with such considerations as must abate the ardour of confidence, and repress the vigour of pursuit. Whoever claims renown from any kind of excellence, expects to fill the place which is now possessed by another; for there are already names of every class sufficient to employ all that will desire to remember them; and surely he that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.

It sometimes happens that fame begins when life is at an end: but far the greater number of candidates for applause have owed their reception in the world to some favourable casualties, and have therefore immediately sunk into neglect, when death stripped them of their casual influence, and neither fortune nor patronage operated in their favour. Among those who have better claims to regard, the honour paid to their memory is commonly proportionate to the reputation which they enjoyed in their lives, though still growing fainter, as it is at a greater distance from the first emission; and since it is so difficult to obtain the notice of contemporaries, how little is it to be hoped from future times? What can merit effect by its own force, when the help of art or of friendship can scarcely support it?

No. 147.] TUESDAY, AUG. 13, 1751.

Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva.
You are of too quick a sight,
Not to discern which way your talent lies.

SIR,

TO THE RAMBLER.

HOR.

ROSCOMMON.

important, and I therefore soon formed a habit of attention, by which I made very quick advances in different kinds of learning, and heard, perhaps too often, very flattering comparisons of my own proficiency with that of others, either less docile by nature, or less happily forwarded by instruction. I was caressed by all that exchanged visits with my father; and as young men are with little difficulty taught to judge favourably of themselves, began to think that close application was no longer necessary, and that the time was now come when I was at liberty to read only for amusement, and was to receive the reward of my fatigues in praise and admiration.

While I was thus banqueting upon my own perfections, and longing in secret to escape from tutorage, my father's brother came from London to pass a summer at his native place. A lucrative employment which he possessed, and a fondness for the conversation and diversions of the gay part of mankind, had so long kept him from rural excursions, that I had never seen him since my infancy. My curiosity was therefore strongly excited by the hope of observing a character more nearly, which I had hitherto reverenced only at a distance.

From all private and intimate conversation, I was long withheld by the perpetual confluence of visitants with whom the first news of my uncle's arrival crowded the house; but was amply recompensed by seeing an exact and punctilious practice of the arts of a courtier, in all the stratagems of endearment, the gradations of respect, and variations of courtesy. I remarked with what justice of distribution he divided his talk to a wide circle; with what address he offered to every man an occasion of indulging some favourite topic, or displaying some particular attainment; the judgment with which he regulated his inquiries after the absent; and the care with which he showed all the companions of his early years how strongly they were infixed in his memory, by the mention of past incidents, and the recital of puerile kindnesses, dangers and frolics. I soon discovered that he possessed some science of graciousness and attraction which books had not taught, and of which neither I nor my father had any knowledge; that he had the power of obliging those whom he did not benefit; that he diffused, upon his cursory behaviour and most trifling actions, a gloss of softness and delicacy by which every one was dazzled; and that, by some occult method of captivation, he animated the timorous, softened the supercilious, I am the eldest son of a gentleman, who hav- and opened the reserved. I could not but repine ing inherited a large estate from his ancestors, at the inelegance of my own manners, which left and feeling no desire either to increase or lessen me no hopes but not to offend, and at the inefficait, has from the time of his marriage generally re-cy of rustic benevolence, which gained no friends sided at his own seat; where, by dividing his but by real service. time among the duties of a father, a master, and a magistrate, the study of literature, and the offices of civility, he finds means to rid himself of the day, without any of those amusements, which all those with whom my residence in this place has made me acquainted, think necessary to lighten the burden of existence.

As little things grow great by continual accumulation, I hope you will not think the dignity of your character impaired by an account of a ludicrous persecution, which, though it produces no scenes of horror or of ruin, yet, by incessant importunity of vexation, wears away my happiness, and consumes those years which nature seems particularly to have assigned to cheerfulness, in silent anxiety and helpless resentment.

My uncle saw the veneration with which 1 caught every accent of his voice, and watched every motion of his hand; and the awkward diligence with which I endeavoured to imitate his embrace of fondness, and his bow of respect. He was like others, easily flattered by an imitator by whom he could not fear ever to be rivalled, and When my age made me capable of instruction, repaid my assiduities with compliments and promy father prevailed upon a gentleman, long fessions. Our fondness was so increased by a known at Oxford for the extent of his learning mutual endeavour to please each other, that and purity of his manners, to undertake my edu-when we returned to London he declared himself cation. The regard with which I saw him treat- unable to leave a nephew so amiable and so

accomplished behind him; and obtained my fa- | the same manner, by those to whom age has ther's permission to enjoy my company for a few given nothing but the assurance which they remonths, by a promise to initiate me in the arts of commend; and therefore cannot but think it usepoliteness, and introduce me into public life.

ful to inform them, that cowardice and delicacy are not to be confounded; and that he whose stupidity has armed him against the shafts of ridicule, will always act and speak with greater audacity than they whose sensibility represses their ardour, and who dare never let their confi dence outgrow their abilities.

Me pater særis oneret catenis,
Quod viro clemens misero peperci:
Me vel extremos Numidarum in agro3
Classe releget.

The courtier had little inclination to fatigue, and therefore, by travelling very slowly, afforded me time for more loose and familiar conversation; but I soon found, that by a few inquiries which he was not well prepared to satisfy, I had made him weary of his young companion. His element was a mixed assembly, where ceremony and healths, compliments and common topics kept the tongue employed with very little assistance from memory or reflection; but in the cha- No. 148.] SATURDAY, AUG. 17, 1751. riot where he was necessitated to support a regular tenor of conversation, without any relief from a new comer, or any power of starting into gay digressions, or destroying argument by a jest, he soon discovered that poverty of ideas which had been hitherto concealed under the tinsel of politeness. The first day he entertained me with the novelties and wonders with which I should be astonished at my entrance into London, and cautioned me with apparent admiration of his own wisdom, against the arts by which rusticity is frequently deluded. The same detail and the same advice he would have repeated on the second day; but as I every moment diverted the discourse to the history of the towns by which we passed, or some other subject of learning or of reason, he soon lost his vivacity, grew peevish and silent, wrapped his cloak about him, composed himself to slumber, and reserved his gayety for fitter auditors.

Me let my father load with chains,
Or banish to Numidia's farthest plains;
My crime, that I, a loyal wife,

In kind compassion spared my husband's life.

HOR

FRANCIS.

POLITICIANS remark, that no oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority. The robber may be seized, and the invader repelled, whenever they are found; they who pretend no right but that of force, may by force be punished or suppressed. But when plunder bears the name of impost, and murder is perpe trated by a judicial sentence, fortitude is intimidated, and wisdom confounded; resistance shrinks from an alliance with rebelion, and the villain remains secure in the robes of the magistrate.

At length I entered London, and my uncle was reinstated in his superiority, He waked at once to loquacity as soon as our wheels rattled on the Equally dangerous and equally detestable are. pavement, and told me the name of every street the cruelties often exercised in private families, as we crossed it, and owner of every house as we under the venerable sanction of parental autho passed by. He presented me to my aunt, a lady rity; the power which we are taught to honourof great eminence for the number of her acquaint- from the first moments of reason; which is guardances, and splendour of her assemblies; and ed from insult and violation by all that can imeither in kindness or revenge consulted with her press awe upon the mind of man; and which in my presence, how I might be most advantage- therefore may wanton in cruelty without control, ously dressed for my first appearance, and most and trample the bounds of right with innumeraexpeditiously disencumbered from villatick bash-ble transgressions, before duty and piety will fulness. My indignation at familiarity thus contemptuous flushed in my face; they mistook anger for shame, and alternately exerted their cloquence upon the benefits of public education, and the happiness of an assurance early acquired..

Assurance is indeed the only qualification to which they seem to have annexed merit, and assurance therefore is perpetually recommended to me, as the supply of every defect, and the ornament of every excellence. I never sit silent in company when secret history is circulating, but I am reproached for want of assurance. If I fail to return the stated answer to a compliment; if I am disconcerted by unexpected raillery; if I blush when I am discovered gazing on a beauty, or hesitate when I find myself embarrassed in an argument; if I am unwilling to talk of what I do not understand, or timorous in undertaking of fices which I cannot gracefully perform; if I suffer a more lively tattler to recount the casualties of a game, or a nimbler fop to pick up a fan, I am censured between pity and contempt as a wretch doomed to grovel in obscurity for want of

assurance.

dare to seek redress, or think themselves at liberty to recur to any other means of deliverance than supplications by which insolence is elated, and tears by which cruelty is gratified.

It was for a long time imagined by the Romans, that no son could be the murderer of his father; and they had therefore no punishment appropri ated to parricide. They seem likewise to have believed with equal confidence, that no father could be cruel to his child; and therefore they allowed every man the supreme judicature in his own house, and put the lives of his offspring into his hands. But experience informed them by degrees, that they had determined too hastily in favour of human nature; they found that instinct. and habit were not able to contend with avarice. or malice; that the nearest relation might be violated; and that power, to whomsoever intrusted, might be ill employed. They were therefore obliged to supply and to change their institutions; to deter the parricide by a new law, and to transfer capital punishments from the parent to the magistrate.

There are indeed many houses which it is imI have found many young persons harassed in | possible to enter familiarly, without discovering

that parents are by no means exempt from the | gated by one man to the destruction of another; intoxications of dominion; and that he who is in no danger of hearing remonstrances but from his own conscience, will seldom be long without the art of controlling his convictions, and modifying justice by his own will.

he may sometimes think himself endangered by the virtues of a subject; he may dread the suc cessful general or the popular orator; his avarice may point out golden confiscations; and his guilt may whisper that he can only be secure by cutting off all power of revenge.

But what can a parent hope from the oppres sion of those who were born to his protection, of those who can disturb him with no competition, who can enrich him with no spoils? Why cowards are cruel may be easily discovered; but for what reason, not more infamous than cowardice, can that man delight in oppression who has nothing to fear?

If in any situation the heart were inaccessible to malignity, it might be supposed to be sufficiently secured by parental relation. To have voluntarily become to any being the occasion of its existence, produces an obligation to make that existence happy. To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded every human mind; and tenderness once excited with this aggravation, that those whom he inwill be hourly increased by the natural contagion jures are always in his sight. The injustice of a of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated prince is often exercised upon those of whom he pleasure, by the consciousness of the dignity of never had any personal or particular knowledge; benefaction. I believe no generous or benevo- and the sentence which he pronounces, whether lent man can see the vilest animal courting his of banishment, imprisonment, or death, removes regard, and shrinking at his anger, playing his from his view the man whom he condemns. But gambols of delight before him, calling on him in the domestic oppressor dooms himself to gaze distress, and flying to him in danger, without upon those faces which he clouds with terror more kindness than he can persuade himself to and with sorrow; and beholds every moment feel for the wild and unsocial inhabitants of the the effects of his own barbarities. He that can air and water. We naturally endear to ourselves bear to give continual pain to those who surthose to whom we impart any kind of pleasure, round him, and can walk with satisfaction in the because we imagine their affection and esteem gloom of his own presence; he that can see secured to us by the benefits which they receive. submissive misery without relenting, and meet There is indeed another method by which the without emotion the eye that implores mercy or pride of superiority may be likewise gratified. demands justice, will scarcely be amended by He that has extinguished all the sensations of hu- remonstrance or admonition; he has found manity, and has no longer any satisfaction in the means of stopping the avenues of tenderness, and reflection that he is loved as the distributor of arming his heart against the force of reason. happiness, may please himself with exciting ter- Even though no consideration should be paid ror as the inflicter of pain: he may delight his so-to the great law of social beings, by which every litude with contemplating the extent of his power individual is commanded to consult the happiand the force of his commands; in imagining the piuess of others, yet the harsh parent is less to desires that flutter on the tongue which is forbid-be vindicated than any other criminal, because den to utter them, or the discontent which preys he less provides for the happiness of himself. on the heart in which fear confines it; he may Every man, however little he loves others, would amuse himself with new contrivances of detec- willingly be loved; every man hopes to live tion, multiplications of prohibition, and varieties long, and therefore hopes for that time at which of punishment; and swell with exultation when he shall sink back to imbecility, and must dehe considers how little of the homage that he re- pend for ease and cheerfulness upon the officeives he owes to choice. ciousness of others. But how has he obviated the inconveniences of old age, who alienates from him the assistance of his children, and whose bed must be surrounded in his last hours, in the hours of languor and dejection, of impatience and of pain, by strangers to whom his life is indifferent, or by enemies to whom his death is desirable?

That princes of this character have been known, the history of all absolute kingdoms will inform us; and since as Aristotle observes, ĥolkovoμikǹ povaoxia, the government of a family is naturally monarchical, it is, like other monarchies, too often arbitrarily administrated. The regal and parental tyrants differ only in the extent of their dominions, and the number of their slaves. The same passions cause the same miseries; except that seldom any prince, however despotic, has so far shaken off all awe of the public eye, as to venture upon those freaks of injustice which are sometimes indulged under the secrecy of a private dwelling. Capricious injunctions, partial decisions, unequal allotments, distributions of reward not by merit but by fancy, and punishments regulated not by the degree of the offence but by the humour of the judge, are too frequent where no power is known but that of a father.

That he delights in the misery of others, no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel? The king may be insti

Piety will indeed in good minds overcome provocation, and those who have been harassed by brutality will forget the injuries which they have suffered, so far as to perform the last duties with alacrity and zeal. But surely no resentment can he equally painful with kindness thus undeserved, nor can severer punishment be imprecated upon a man not wholly lost in meanness and stupidity, than through the tediousness of decrepitude, to be reproached by the kindness of his own children, to receive not the tribute but the alms of attendance, and to owe every relief of his miseries, not to gratitude but to mercy.

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You wonder now that no man sees
Such friends as those of ancient Greece.
Here lay the point :-Orestes' meat
Was just the same his friend did eat
Nor can it yet be found, his wine
Was better, Pylades, than thine.
In home-spun russet I am dress'd;
Your cloth is always of the best;
But, honest Marcus, if you please
To choose me for your Pylades,
Remember, words alone are vain;
Love-if you would be loved again.-F. LEWIS.

TO THE RAMBLER.

splendour and equally careless of expense; they both justified their profusion to themselves by endeavouring to believe it necessary to the ex tension of their acquaintance, and improvement of their interest; and whenever any place became vacant, they expected to be repaid. In the midst of these hopes my father was snatched away by an apoplexy; and my mother who had no pleasure but in dress, equipage, assemblies, and compliments, finding that she could live no longer in her accustomed rank, sunk into dejection, and in two years wore out her life with envy and discontent.

I was sent with a sister one year younger than myself to the elder brother of my father. Wo were not yet capable of observing how much fortune influences affection, but flattered our selves on the road with the tenderness and regard with which we should be treated by our uncle. Our reception was rather frigid than malignant; we were introduced to our young cousins, and for the first month more frequently consoled than upbraided; but in a short time we found our prattle repressed, our dress neglected, our endearments unregarded, and our requests referred to the housekeeper.

SIR, No depravity of the mind has been more frequently or justly censured than ingratitude. There is indeed sufficient reason for looking on The forms of decency were now violated, and those that can return evil for good, and repay every day produced new insults. We were soon kindness and assistance with hatred or neglect, brought to the necessity of receding from our as corrupted beyond the common degrees of imagined equality with our cousins, to whom we wickedness; nor will he, who has once been sunk into humble companions without choice or clearly detected in acts of injury to his benefac-influence, expected only to echo their opinions, tor, deserve to be numbered among social beings; facilitate their desires, and accompany their ramhe has endeavoured to destroy confidence, to in-bles. It was unfortunate that our early introtercept sympathy, and to turn every man's at-duction into polite company, and habitual knowtention wholly on himself.

ledge of the arts of civility, had given us such an There is always danger lest the honest abhor- appearance of superiority to the awkward bashrence of a crime should raise the passions with fulness of our relations, as naturally drew respect too much violence against the man to whom it is and preference from every stranger; and my imputed. In proportion as guilt is more enor- aunt was forced to assert the dignity of her own mous it ought to be ascertained by stronger evi- children while they were sculking in corners for dence. The charge against ingratitude is very fear of notice, and hanging down their heads general; almost every man can tell what favours in silent confusion, by relating the indiscretion he has conferred upon insensibility, and how of our father, displaying her own kindness, lamuch happiness he has bestowed without re-menting the misery of birth without estate, and turn; but perhaps if these patrons and protec- declaring her anxiety for our future provision, tors were confronted with any whom they boast and the expedients which she had formed to se of having befriended, it would often appear that cure us from those follies, or crimes, to which they consulted only their pleasure or vanity, and the conjunction of pride and want often gives repaid themselves their petty donatives by grati-occasion. In a short time care was taken to fications of insolence and indulgence of contempt.

It has happened that much of my time has been passed in a dependent state, and consequently I have received many favours in the opinion of those at whose expense I have been maintained; yet I do not feel in my heart any burning gratitude or tumultuous affection; and as I would not willingly suppose myself less susceptible of virtuous passions than the rest of mankind, I shall lay the history of my life before you, that you may by your judgment of my conduct, either reform, or confirm, my present sentiments.

prevent such vexatious mistakes; we were told that fine clothes would only fill our heads with false expectations, and our dress was therefore accommodated to our fortune.

Childhood is not easily dejected or mortified. We felt no lasting pain from insolence or ne glect; but, finding that we were favoured and commended by all whose interest did not prompt them to discountenance us, preserved our vivacity and spirit to years of greater sensibility. It then became irksome and disgusting to live without any principle of action but the will of another; and we often met privately in the garden to lament our condition, and to ease our hearts with mutual narratives of caprice, peevishness, and affront.

My father was the second son of a very ancient and wealthy family. He married a lady of equal birth, whose fortune joined to his own might There are innumerable modes of insult and have supported his posterity in honour; but tokens of contempt, for which it is not easy to being gay and ambitious, he prevailed on his find a name, which vanish to nothing in an atfriends to procure him a post, which gave him tempt to describe them, and yet may by continual an opportunity of displaying his elegance and repetition make day pass after day in sorrow politeness. My mother was equally pleased with land in terror. Phrases of cursory compliment

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