grow a malcontent, reflect upon the present conduct, and by gradual murmurs fall off from his friends into a new party, by just steps and measures. For want of such notices, I have formerly known a very well-bred person refuse to return a bow of a man whom he thought in disgrace, that was next day made secretary of state; and another, who, after a long neglect of a minister, came to his levee, and made professions of zeal for his service the very day before he was turned out.

This produces also unavoidable confusions and mistakes in the descriptions of great men's parts and merits. That ancient lyric, Mr. D'Ursey, some years ago writ a dedication to a certain lord, in which he celebrated him for the greatest poet and critic of that age, upon a misinformation in Dyer's Letter, that his noble patron was made lord chamberlain.* In short, innumerable votes, speeches, and sermons, have been thrown away, and turned to no account, merely for want of due and timely intelligence. Nay, it has been known, that a panegyric has been half printed off, when the poet, upon the removal of the minister, has been forced to alter it into a satire.

For the conduct therefore of such useful persons, as are ready to do their country service upon all occasions, I have an engine in my study, which is a sort of a Political Barometer, or, to speak more intelligibly, a State Weather-glass, that, by the rising and falling of a certain magical liquor, presages all changes and revolutions in government, as the common glass does those of the weather. This Weather-glass is said to have been invented by Cardan, and given by him as a present to his great countryman and contemporary Machiavel; which, by the way, may serve to rectify a received error in chronology, that places one of these some years after the other. How or

This dedication was to the "Second Part of Don Quixote," which D'Ursey addressed to Charles, Earl of Dorset. In it are these lines :

"You have, my Lord, a patent from above,
And can monopolize both wit and love,
Inspir'd and blest by Heaven's peculiar care,
Ador'd by all the wise and all the fair;
To whom the world united give this due,
Best judge of men, and best of poets too."

B B

when it came into my hands, I shall desire to be excused, if I keep to myself; but so it is, that I have walked by it for the better part of a century to my safety at least, if not to my advantage; and have among my papers a register of all the changes that have happened in it from the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign.

In the time of that princess it stood long at Settled Fair. At the latter end of king James the First, it fell to Cloudy. It held several years after at Stormy; insomuch, that at last, despairing of seeing any clear weather at home, I followed the royal exile, and some time after finding my Glass rise, returned to my native country, with the rest of the loyalists. I was then in hopes to pass the remainder of my days in Settled Fair: but, alas! during the greatest part of that reign the English nation lay in a dead calm, which, as is usual, was followed by high winds and tempests, until of late years; in which, with unspeakable joy and satisfaction, I have seen our political weather returned to Settled Fair. I must only observe, that for all this last summer my Glass has pointed at Changeable. Upon the whole, I often apply to Fortune Ænea's speech to the Sibyl:

Non ulla laborum

O virgo, nova mi facies inopinave surgit :
Omnia præcepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi.

No terror to my view,

No frightful face of danger can be new :

The mind foretels whatever comes to pass;

A thoughtful mind, is Fortune's Weather-glass.

The advantages, which have accrued to those whom I have advised in their affairs, by virtue of this sort of prescience, have been very considerable. A nephew of mine, who has never put his money into the stocks, or taken it out, without my advice, has in a few years raised five hundred pounds to almost so many thousands. As for myself, who look upon riches to consist rather in content than possessions, and measure the greatness of the mind rather by its tranquillity than its ambition, I have seldom used my Glass to make my

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way in the world, but often to retire from it. This is a byepath to happiness, which was first discovered to me by a most pleasing apophthegm of Pythagoras: "When the winds," says he, rise, worship the echo." That great philosopher (whether to make his doctrines more venerable, or to gild his precepts with the beauty of imagination, or to awaken the curiosity of his disciples, for I will not suppose, what is usually said, that he did it to conceal his wisdom from the vulgar) has couched several admirable precepts in remote allusions and mysterious sentences. By the winds in this apophthegm, are meant state hurricanes and popular tumults. "When these rise," says he, "worship the echo;" that is, withdraw yourself from the multitude into deserts, woods, solitudes, or the like retirements, which are the usual habitations of the echo.

LEGACY OF A VIRTUOSO.

No. 216. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1710. [ADDISON.]

Weight and importance some to trifles give.

NATURE is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite. For this reason, I would not discourage any searches that are made into the most minute and trivial parts of the creation. However, since the world abounds in the noblest fields of speculation, it is, methinks, the mark of a little genius, to be wholly conversant among insects, reptiles, animalcules, and those trifling rarities that furnish out the apartment of a virtuoso.

There are some men whose heads are so oddly turned this way, that though they are utter strangers to the common occurrences of life, they are able to discover the sex of a cockle, or describe the generation of a mite, in all its circum

stances. They are so little versed in the world, that they scarce know a horse from an ox; but, at the same time, will tell you with a great deal of gravity, that a flea is a rhinoceros, and a snail an hermaphrodite. I have known one of these whimsical philosophers, who has set a greater value upon a collection of spiders than he would upon a flock of sheep, and has sold his coat off his back to purchase a tarantula.

I would not have a scholar wholly unacquainted with these secrets and curiosities of nature; but certainly the mind of man, that is capable of so much higher contemplations, should not be altogether fixed upon such mean and disproportioned objects. Observations of this kind are apt to alienate us too much from the knowledge of the world, and to make us serious upon trifles; by which means they expose philosophy to the ridicule of the witty, and contempt of the ignorant. In short, studies of this nature should be the diversions, relaxations, and amusements; not the care, business, and concern of life.

It is indeed wonderful to consider, that there should be a sort of learned men, who are wholly employed in gathering together the refuse of nature, if I may call it so, and hoarding up in their chests and cabinets such creatures as others industriously avoid the sight of. One does not know how to mention some of the most precious parts of their treasure, without a kind of an apology for it. I have been shewn a beetle valued at twenty crowns, and a toad at an hundred but we must take this for a general rule, “That whatever appears trivial or obscene in the common notions of the world, looks grave and philosophical in the eye of a Virtuoso."

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:

To shew this humour in its perfection, I shall present my reader with the legacy of a certain Virtuoso* who laid out a considerable estate in natural rarities and curiosities, which upon his death-bed he bequeathed to his relations and friends, in the following words:

* Dr. John Woodward was supposed to have been alluded to here.

THE WILL OF A VIRTUOSO.

I Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound health of mind, but in great weakness of body, do by this my last will and testament bestow my worldly goods and chattels in manner following:

Imprimis, To my dear wife,

One box of butterflies,

One drawer of shells,
A female skeleton,

A dried cockatrice,

Item, To my daughter Elizabeth,

My receipt for preserving dead caterpillars,

As also my preparations of winter May-dew, and embryopickle.

Item, To my little daughter Fanny,

Three crocodile's eggs.

And upon the birth of her first child, if she marries with her mother's consent,

The nest of an humming-bird.

Item, To my eldest brother, as an acknowledgment for the lands he has vested in my son Charles, I bequeath,

My last year's collection of grashoppers.

Item, To his daughter Susanna, being his only child, I bequeath my

English weeds pasted on royal paper,

With my large folio of Indian Cabbage.

Having fully provided for my nephew Isaac, by making over to him some years since,

A horned Scarabæus,

The skin of a rattle-snake, and

The mummy of an Egyptian king,

I make no further provision for him in this my Will.

My eldest son John, having spoke disrespectfully of his little sister, whom I keep by me in spirits of wine, and in