haps, with equal abilities and with equal virtue; But Catiline perished in the field, and Cæsar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority: and from that time, every monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured by a comparison with Cæsar; and Catiline has been never mentioned, but that his name might be applied to traitors and incendiaries. In an age. more remote, Xerxes projected the conquest of Greece, and brought down the power of Asia against it: but after the world had been filled with expectation and terror, his army was beaten, his fleet was destroyed, and Xerxes has never been mentioned without contempt. A few years afterwards Greece likewise had her turn of giving birth to a projector; who, invading Asia with a small army, went forward in search of adventures, and by his escape from one danger, gained only more rashness to rush into another; he stormed city after city, overran kingdom after kingdom, fought battles only for barren victory, and invaded nations only that he might make his way through them to new invasions; but having been fortunate in the execution of his projects, he died with the name of Alexander the Great. These are, indeed, events of ancient times; but human nature is always the same, and every age will afford us instances of public censures influenced by events. The great business of the middle centuries, was the holy war; which undoubtedly was a noble project, and was for a long time prosecuted with a spirit equal to that with which it had been contrived; but the ardour of the European heroes only hurried them to destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them: their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause has been defamed. circuit of Asia, and by the conquest of Turkey to unite Sweden with his new dominions: but this mighty project was crushed at Pultowa; and Charles has since been considered as a madman by those powers, who sent their ambassadors to solicit his friendship, and their generals " to learn under him the art of war." The Czar found employment sufficient in his own dominions, and amused himself in digging canals, and building cities; murdering his subjects with insufferable fatigues, and transplanting nations from one corner of his dominions to another, without regretting the thousands that perished on the way: but he attained his end, he made his people formidable, and is numbered by fame among the demi-gods. I am far from intending to vindicate the san guinary projects of heroes and conquerors, and would wish rather to diminish the reputation of their success, than the infamy of their miscarriages: for I cannot conceive, why he that has burned cities, wasted nations, and filled the world with horror and desolation, should be more kindly regarded by mankind, than he who died in the rudiments of wickedness; why he that accomplished wickedness should be glorious, and he that only endeavoured it should be criminal. I would wish Cæsar and Catiline, Xerxes and Alexander, Charles and Peter, huddled together in obscurity or detestation. But there is another species of projectors, to whom I would willingly conciliate mankind; whose ends are generally laudable, and whose labours are innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature, or contriving new works of art; but who are yet persecuted with incessant obloquy, and whom the universal contempt with which they are treated, often debars from that success which their industry would obtain, if it were permitted to act without opposition. They who find themselves inclined to censure new undertakings, only because they are new, should consider, that the folly of projection is When Columbus had engaged king Ferdinand very seldom the folly of a fool; it is commonly in the discovery of the other hemisphere, the the ebullition of a capacious mind, crowded with sailors with whom he embarked in the expedi- variety of knowledge, and heated with intensetion had so little confidence in their commander, ness of thought; it proceeds often from the conhat after having been long at sea looking for sciousness of uncommon powers, from the con coasts which they expected never to find, they fidence of those, who, having already done aised a general mutiny, and demanded to re- much, are easily persuaded that they can do turn. He found means to soothe them into a more. When Rowley had completed the orpermission to continue the same course three rery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when days longer, and on the evening of the third day Boyle had exhausted the secrets of vulgar chydescried land. Had the impatience of his crewmistry, he turned his thoughts to the work of denied him a few hours of the time requested, transmutation. what had been his fate but to have come back with the infamy of a vain projector, who had betrayed the king's credulity to useless expenses, and risked his life in seeking countries that had no existence? how would those that had rejected his proposals, have triumphed in their acuteness! and when would his name have been mentioned, but with the makers of potable gold and maleable glass? The last royal projectors with whom the world has been troubled, were Charles of Sweden, and the Czar of Muscovy. Charles, if any judgment may be formed of his designs by his inensures and his inquiries, had purposed first dethrone the Czar, then to lead his army through pathless deserts into China, thence to make his way by the sword through the whole A projector generally unites those qualities which have the fairest claim to veneration, extent of knowledge, and greatness of design; it was said of Catiline, “immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat." Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects, though they differ in their morals; they all fail by attempting things beyond their power, by despising vulgar attainments, and aspiring to performances to which perhaps nature has not proportioned the force of man; when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence. That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation of those parts of nature which lie vet within my reach, and I continued for some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands. waste, and the invention of those arts which are | hopes of becoming in a short time one of the diyet wanting to the felicity of life. If they are, rectors of a wealthy company, and, to complete therefore, universally discouraged, art and dis- my mercantile honours, enjoyed the expensive covery can make no advances. Whatever is at-happiness of fining for sheriff. tempted without previous certainty of success, Riches, you know, easily produce riches. may be considered as a project, and amongst nar- when I had arrived to this degree of wealth, i row minds may, therefore, expose its author to had no longer any obstruction or opposition to censure and contempt; and if the liberty of laugh-fear; new acquisitions were hourly brought ing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not understand, every project will be considered as madness, and every great or new design will be censured as a project. Men, unaccustomed to reason and researches, think every enterprise impracticable, which is extend-ment. ed beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam of water, as equally the dreams of mechanic lunacy; and would hear, with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea. I HAVE been for many years a trader in London. My beginning was narrow, and my stock small. was, therefore, a long time brow-beaten and lespised by those, who, having more money, thought they had more merit than myself. I did not, however, suffer my resentment to instigate me to any mean arts of supplantation, nor my eagerness of riches to betray me to any indirect methods of gain; I pursued my business with incessant assiduity, supported by the hope of being one day richer than those who contemned me; and had, upon every annual review of my books, the satisfaction of finding my fortune increased beyond my expectation. In a few years my industry and probity were fully recompensed; my wealth was really great, and my reputation for wealth still greater. I had large warehouses crowded with goods, and considerable sums in the public funds; I was caressed upon the Exchange by the most eminent merchants; became the oracle of the common council; was solicited to engage in all commercial undertakings; was flattered with the At last I resolved to complete the circle of a citizen's prosperity by the purchase of an estate in the country, and to close my life in retireFrom the hour that this design entered my imagination, I found the fatigues of my employment every day more oppressive, and persuaded myself that I was no longer equal to perpetual attention, and that my health would soon be destroyed by the torment and distraction of extensive business. I could image to myself no happiness, but in vacant jollity, and uninterrupted leisure; nor entertain my friends with any other topic, than the vexation and uncertainty of trade, and the happiness of rural privacy. But notwithstanding these declarations, I could not at once reconcile myself to the thoughts of ceasing to get money; and though I was every day inquiring for a purchase, I found some reason for rejecting all that were offered me; and, indeed, had accumulated so many beauties and conveniences in my idea of the spot where I was finally to be happy, that, perhaps, the world might have been travelled over without discovery of a place which would not have been de fective in some particular. Thus I went on, still talking of retirement, and still refusing to retire; my friends began to laugh at my delays, and I grew ashamed to trifle longer with my own inclinations; an estate was at length purchased, I transferred my stock to a prudent young man who had married my daughter, went down into the country, and com menced lord of a spacious manor. Here for some time, I found happiness equal to my expectation. I reformed the old house according to the advice of the best architects, I threw down the walls of the garden, and enclosed it with palisades, planted long avenues of trees, filled a greenhouse with exotic plants, dug a new canal, and threw the earth into the old moat. The fame of these expensive improvements brought in all the country to see the show. I entertained my visitors with great liberality, led them round my gardens, showed them my apartments, laid before them plans for new decorations, and was gratified by the wonder of some and the envy of others. I was envied: but how little can one man judge of the condition of another! The time was now coming, in which affluence and splendour could no longer make me pleased with myself. I had built till the imagination of the architect was exhausted; I had added one convenience to another, till I knew not what more to wish or to design; I had laid out my gardens, planted my park, and completed my waterworks; and what now remained to be done? what, but to look up to turrets, of which, when they were once raised I had no further use, to range over apartments where time was tarnishing the furniture, to stand by the cascade of which I scarcely now perceived the sound, and to watch the growth of woods that must give their shade to a distant generation. In this gloomy inactivity, is every day begun and ended: the happiness that I have been so long procuring is now at an end, because it has been procured; I wander from room to room, till I am weary of myself; I ride out to a neighbouring hill in the centre of my estate, from whence all my lands lie in prospect around me; I see nothing that I have not seen before, and return home disappointed, though I knew that I had nothing to expect. direction of the vicar had within a few weeks, J In my happy days of business I had been accustomed to rise early in the morning and remember the time when I grieved that the night came so soon upon me, and obliged me, for a few hours, to shut out affluence and prosperity. I now seldom see the rising sun, but to "tell him," with the fallen angel, "how i hate his beams." I awake from sleep as to languor or imprisonment, and have no employment for the first hour but to consider by what art I shall rid myself of the second. I protract the breakfast as long as I can, because when it is ended I have no call for my attention, till I can with some degree of decency grow impatient for my dinner. If I could dine all my life I should be happy; I cat not because I am hungry, but because I am idle: but, alas! the time quickly comes when I can eat no longer; and so ill does my constitutions of the country; so that when the first civilition second my inclination, that I cannot bear strong liquors; seven hours must then be endured, before I shall sup; but supper comes at last, the more welcome as it is in a short time succeeded by sleep. Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the happiness, the hope of which seduced me from the duties of a mercantile life. I shall be told by those who read my narrative, that there are many means of innocent amusement, and many schemes of useful employment, which I do not appear ever to have known; and that nature and art have provided pleasures by which, without the drudgery of settled business, the active may be engaged, the solitary soothed, and the social entertained. I am naturally inclined to hospitality, and for some time kept up a constant intercourse of visits with the neighbouring gentlemen; but though they are easily brought about me by better wine than they can find at any other house, I am not much relieved by their conversation; they have no skill in commerce or the stocks, and I have no knowledge of the history of families or the fac ties are over, they usually talk to one another, and I am left alone in the midst of the company. Though I cannot drink myself, I am obliged to encourage the circulation of the glass; their mirth grows more turbulent and obstreperous; and before their merriment is at an end, I am sick with disgust, and perhaps reproached with my sobriety, or by some sly insinuations ininsulted as a cit. Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the life to which I am condemned by a foolish endeavour to be happy by imitation; such is the happiness to which I pleased myself with approaching, and which I considered as the chief end of my cares and my labours. I toiled year after year with cheerfulness, in expectation of the happy hour in which I might be idle: the privilege of happiness is attained, but has not brought with it the blessing of tranquillity. I am yours, &c. MERCATOR TUESDAY, Nov. 13, 1753. Sub judice lis est. These arts, Sir, I have tried. When first I took possession of my estate, in conformity to the taste of my neighbours, I bought guns and nets, filled my kennel with dogs, and my stable with horses: but a little experience showed me, that these instruments of rural felicity would afford me few gratifications. I never shot but to No. 107.] miss the mark, and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the fire of my own gun. I could discover no music in the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of pity for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was sacrificed to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at leisure to reflect upon her danger; for my horse, who had been bred to the chase, did not always regard my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges and ditches at his own discretion, and hurried me along with the dogs, to the great diversion of my brother sportsmen. His eagerness of pursuit once incited him to swim a river; and I had leisure to resolve in the water, that I would never hazard my life again for the deruction of a hare. ordered books to be procured, and by the HOR. And of their vain disputings find no end. FRANCIS. IT has been sometimes asked by those who find the appearance of wisdom more easily attained by questions than solutions, how it comes to pass, that the world is divided by such difference of opinion; and why men equally reasonable, and equally lovers of truth, do not always think in the same manner? With regard to simple propositions, where the terms are understood, and the whole subject is comprehended at once, there is such a uniformity of sentiment among all human beings, that, for many ages, a very numerous set of notions were supposed to be innate, or necessarily coex than two Greek epigrammatists will afford us in their accounts of human life, which I shall lay before the reader in English prose. Posidippus, a comic poet, utters this com eligible to pass? In public assemblies are debates and troublesome affairs: domestic privacies are haunted with anxieties; in the country is labour; on the sea is terror: in a foreign land, he that has money must live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress: are you married? you are troubled with suspicions; are you single? you languish in solitude; children occasion toil, and a childless life is a state of destitution: the time of youth is a time of folly, and gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice only, therefore, can be made, either never to receive being, or immediately to lose it." istent with the faculty of reason; it being imagined, that universal agreement could proceed only from the invariable dictates of the universal parent. In questions diffuse and compounded, this simi-plaint: "Through which of the paths of life is it larity of determination is no longer to be expected. At our first sally into the intellectual world, we all march together along one straight and "pen road; but as we proceed further, and wider prospects open to our view, every eye fixes upon a different scene; we divide into various paths, and, as we move forward, are still at a greater distance from each other. As a question becomes more complicated and involved, and extends to a greater number of relations, disagreement of opinion will always be multiplied; not because we are irrational, but because we are finite beings, furnished with different kinds of knowledge, exerting different degrees of attention, one discovering consequences which escape another, none taking in the whole concatenation of causes and effects, and most comprehending but a very small part, each comparing what he observes with a different criterion, and each referring it to a different purpose. Where, then, is the wonder, that they who see only a small part, should judge erroneously of the whole? or that they, who see different and dissimilar parts, should judge differently from each other? Whatever has various respects, must have various appearances of good and evil, beauty or deformity; thus the gardener tears up as a weed, the plant which the physician gathers as a medicine; and "a general," says Sir Kenelm Digby, "will look with pleasure over a plain, as a fit place on which the fate of empires might be decided in battle, which the farmer will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of pasturage, nor fit for tillage." Two men examining the same question, proceed commonly like the physician and gardener in selecting herbs, or the farmer and hero look-ing on the plain; they bring minds impressed with different notions, and direct their inquiries to different ends; they form, therefore, contrary conclusions, and each wonders at the other's absurdity. Such and so gloomy is the prospect which Posidippus has laid before us. But we are not to acquiesce too hastily in his determination against the value of existence: for Metrodorus, a philosopher of Athens, has shown, that life has pleasures as well as pains; and having exhibited the present state of man in brighter colours, draws with equal appearance of reason, a contrary conclusion. "You may pass well through any of the paths of life. In public assemblies are honours and transactions of wisdom: in domestic privacy is stillness and quiet: in the country are the beauties of nature: on the sea is the hope of gain: in a foreign land, he that is rich is honoured, he that is poor may keep his poverty secret: are you married? you have a cheerful house; are you single: you are unincumbered; children are objects of affection, to be without children is to be without care: the time of youth is the time of vigour, and gray hairs are made venerable by piety. It will, therefore, never be a wise man's choice, either not to obtain existence, or to lose it; for every state of life has its felicity." In these epigrams are included most of the questions which have engaged the speculations of the inquirers after happiness; and though they will not much assist our determinations, they may, perhaps, equally promote our quiet, by showing that no absolute determination ever can be formed. We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, Whether a public station, or private life, be because we very often differ from ourselves. desirable, has always been debated. We see How often we alter our minds, we do not always here both the allurements and discouragements remark; because the change is sometimes made of civil employments; on one side there is trouimperceptibly and gradually, and the last convic- ble, on the other honour; the management of tion effaces all memory of the former, yet every affairs is vexatious and difficult, but it is the only man accustomed from time to time to take a sur-duty in which wisdom can be conspicuously disvey of his own notions, will, by a slight retrospection, be able to discover, that his mind has suffered many revolutions; that the same things have in the several parts of his life been condemned and approved, pursued and shunned and that on many occasions, even when his practice has been steady, his mind has been wavering, and he has persisted in a scheme of action, rather because he feared the censure of inconstancy, than because he was always pleased with his own choice. Of the different faces shown by the same objects, as they are viewed on opposite sides, and of the different inclinations which they must constantly raise in him that contemplates them, a inore striking example cannot easily be found played: it must then still be left to every man to choose either ease or glory; nor can any general precept be given, since no man can be happy by the prescription of another. Thus, what is said of children by Posidippus, "that they are occasions of fatigue," and by Metrodorus, " that they are objects of affection," is equally certain; but whether they will give most pain or pleasure, must depend on their future conduct and dispositions, on many causes over which the parent can have little influence: there is, therefore, room for all the caprices of imagination, and desire must be proportioned to the hope or fear that shall happen to predominate. Such is the uncertainty in which we are always likely to remain with regard to questions wherein we have most interest, and which every day affords us fresh opportunity to examine: we may examine, indeed, but we never can decide, because our faculties are unequal to the subject; we see a little, and form an opinion; we see more, and change it. This inconstancy and unsteadiness, to which we must so often find ourselves liable, ought certainly to teach us moderation and forbearance towards those who cannot accommodate them.selves to our sentiments: if they are deceived, we have no right to attribute their mistake to obstinacy or negligence, because we likewise have been mistaken; we may, perhaps, again, change our own opinion: and what excuse shall we be able to find for aversion and malignity conceived against him, whom we shall then find to have committed no fault, and who offended us only by refusing to follow us into error? It may likewise contribute to soften that resentment which pride naturally raises against opposition, if we consider, that he who differs from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object, and we have another; each describes what he sees with equal fidelity, and each regulates his steps by his own eyes: one man, with Posidippus, looks on celibacy as a state of gloomy solitude, without a partner in joy, or a comforter in sorrow; the other considers it, with Metrodorus, as a state free from incumbrances, in which a man is at liberty to choose his own gratifications, to remove from place to place in quest of pleasure, and to think of nothing but merriment and diversion: full of these notions one hastens to choose a wife, and the other laughs at his rashness, or pities his ignorance; yet it is possible that each is right, but that each is right only for himself. Life is not the object of science: we see a little, very little; and what is beyond we only can conjecture. If we inquire of those who have gone before us, we receive small satisfaction; some have travelled life without observation, and some willingly mislead us. The only thought, therefore, on which we can repose with comfort, is that which presents to us the care of Providence, whose eye takes in the whole of things, and under whose direction all involuntary errors will terminate in happiness. No. 108.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1753. Nobis, cum simul occidit orevis lux, When once the short-lived mortal dies, CATULLUS. ADDISON. as long as human nature shall remain the same. When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flock and herds to frisk over vales painted with flow ers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beau ties of nature, so little delighted with the renova tion of the world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring? When night overshadows a romantic scene all is stillness, silence, and quiet; the poets o the grove cease their melody, the moon tower. over the world in gentle majesty, men forget their labours, and their cares, and every passion and pursuit is for a while suspended. All this we know already, yet we hear it repeated without weariness; because such is generally the life of man, that he is pleased to think on the time when he shall pause from a sense of his condition. When a poetical grove invites us to its covert, we know that we shall find what we have already seen, a limpid brook murmuring over pebbles, a bank diversified with flowers, a green arch that excludes the sun, and a natural grot shaded with myrtles; yet who can forbear to enter the pleasing gloom, to enjoy coolness and privacy, and gratify himself once more by scenes with which nature has formed him to be de lighted? Many moral sentiments likewise are so adapted to our state, that they find approbation whenever they solicit it, and are seldom read without exciting a gentle emotion in the mind: such is the comparison of the life of man with the duration of a flower, a thought which perhaps every nation has heard warbled in its own language, from the inspired poets of the Hebrews to our own times; yet this comparison must always please, because every heart feels its justness, and every hour confirms it by example. Such, likewise, is the precept that directs us to use the present hour, and refer nothing to a distant time, which we are uncertain whether we shall reach: this every moralist may venture to inculcate, because it will always be approved, and because it is always forgotten. This rule is, indeed, every day enforced, by arguments more powerful than the dissertations of moralists: we see men pleasing themselves with future happiness, fixing a certain hour for the completion of their wishes, and perishing some at a greater and some at a less distance from the happy time; all complaining of their disappointments, and lamenting that they had suffered the years which Heaven allowed them, to pass without improvement, and deferred the Ir may have been observed by every reader, that principal purpose of their lives to the time when there are certain topics which never are exhaust-life itself was to forsake them. ed. Of some images and sentiments the mind It is not only uncertain, whether through all of man may be said to be enamoured; it meets the casualties and dangers which beset the life them, however often they occur, with the same of man, we shall be able to reach the time ap ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mis-pointed for happiness or wisdom; but it is likely, tress, and parts from them with the same regret that whatever now hinders us from doing that when they can no longer be enjoyed. which our reason and conscience declare neces Of this kind are many descriptions which the sary to be done, will equally obstruct us in times poets have transcribed from each other and to come. It is easy for the imagination, operattheir successors will probably copy to the ending on things not yet existing, to please itself of time; which will continue to engage, or as with scenes of unmingled feheity, or plan out the French term it, to flatter the imagination, courses of uniform virtue; but good and evil are |