Men of this kind are generally to be found among those that have not mingled much in general conversation, but spent their lives amidst the obsequiousness of dependents, and the flattery of parasites; and by long consulting only their own inclination, have forgotten that others have claim to the same deference. der, and now and then with pity, at the thought- | cause it is apparent that they are not only carelessness with which some alienate from them-less of pleasing, but studious to offend; that they selves the affections of all whom chance, busi- contrive to make all approaches to them difficult ness, or inclination, brings in their way. When and vexatious, and imagine that they aggrandize we see a man pursuing some darling interest, themselves by wasting the time of others in use without much regard to the opinion of the world, less attendance, by mortifying them with slights, we justly consider him as corrupt and danger- and teasing them with affronts. ous, but are not long in discovering his motives; we see him actuated by passions which are hard to be resisted, and deluded by appearances which have dazzled stronger eyes. But the greater part of those who set mankind at defiance by hourly irritation, and who live but to infuse malignity, and multiply enemies, have no hopes to foster, no designs to promote, nor any expectations of Tyranny thus avowed is indeed an exuberance attaining power by insolence, or of climbing to of pride, by which all mankind is so much engreatness by trampling on others. They give up raged, that it is never quietly endured, except in all the sweets of kindness, for the sake of pee-those who can reward the patience which they vishness, petulance, or gloom; and alienate the exact; and insolence is generally surrounded world by neglect of the common forms of civili- only by such whose baseness inclines them to ty, and breach of the established laws of conver-think nothing insupportable that produces gain, and who can laugh at scurrility and rudeness with a luxurious table and an open purse. sation. Every one must, in the walks of life, have met with men of whom all speak with censure, though they are not chargeable with any crime, and whom none, can be persuaded to love, though a reason can scarcely be assigned why they should be hated; and who, if their good qualities and actions sometimes force a commendation, have their panegyric always concluded with confessions of disgust; "he is a good man, but I cannot like him." Surely such persons have sold the esteem of the world at too low a price, since they have lost one of the rewards of virtue, without gaining the profits of wickedness. But though all wanton provocations and con temptuous insolence are to be diligently avoided, there is no less danger in timid compliance and tame resignation. It is common for soft and fear ful tempers to give themselves up implicitly to the direction of the bold, the turbulent, and the overbearing; of those whom they do not believe wiser or better than themselves; to recede from the best designs where opposition must be encountered, and to fall off from virtue for fear of censure. the right, and exerted with bitterness, if even to his own conviction he is detected in the wrong. Some firmness and resolution is necessary to This ill economy of fame is sometimes the ef- the discharge of duty; but it is a very unhappy fect of stupidity: men whose perceptions are state of life in which the necessity of such struglanguid and sluggish, who lament nothing but gles frequently occurs; for no man is defeated loss of money, and feel nothing but a blow, are without some resentment, which will be continuoften at a difficulty to guess why they are encom-ed with obstinacy while he believes himself in passed with enemies, though they neglect all those arts by which men are endeared to one another. They comfort themselves that they have lived irreproachably; that none can charge them with having endangered his life, or diminished his possessions; and therefore conclude that they suffer by some invincible fatality, or impute the malice of their neighbours to ignorance or envy. They wrap themselves up in their innocence, and enjoy the congratulations of their own hearts, without knowing or suspecting that they are every day deservedly incurring resentments, by withholding from those with whom they converse, that regard, or appearance of regard, to which every one is entitled by the customs of the world. Even though no regard be had to the external consequences of contrariety and dispute, it must be painful to a worthy mind to put others in pain, and there will be danger lest the kindest nature may be vitiated by too long a custom of debate and contest. I am afraid that I may be taxed with insensibility by many of my correspondents, who believe their contributions unjustly neglected. And, indeed, when I sit before a pile of papers, of which each is the production of laborious study, and the offspring of a fond parent, I, who know the passions of an author, cannot remember how long they have lain in my boxes unregarded, without imagining to myself the various changes of sorrow, impatience, and resentment, which the writ ers must have felt in this tedious interval. There are many injuries which almost every man feels, though he does not complain, and which, upon those whom virtue, elegance, or vanity, have made delicate and tender, fix deep and These reflections are still more awakened, lasting impressions; as there are many arts of when, upon perusal, I find some of them calling graciousness and conciliation, which are to be for a place in the next paper, a place which they practised without expense, and by which those have never yet obtained: others writing in a style may be made our friends, who have never receiv- of superiority and haughtiness, as secure of deed from us any real benefit. Such arts, when ference, and above fear of criticism; others humthey include neither guilt nor meanness, it is sure-bly offering their weak assistance with softness ly reasonable to learn, for who would want that love which is so easily to be gained? And such injuries are to be avoided; for who would be hated without profit! Some, indeed, there are, for whom the excuse of ignorance or negligence cannot be alleged, be and submission, which they believe impossible to be resisted; some introducing their compositions with a menace of the contempt which he that re fuses them will incur; others applying privately to the booksellers for their interest and solicitation; every one by different ways endeavouring to secure the bliss of publication. I cannot but consider myself as placed in a very incommodious situation, where I am forced to repress confidence, which it is pleasing to indulge, to repay civilities with appearances of neglect, and so frequently to offend those by whom I never was offended. I know well how rarely an author, fired with the beauties of his new composition, contains his raptures in his own bosom, and how naturally he imparts to his friends his expectation of renown; and as I can easily conceive the eagerness with which a new paper is snatched up, by one who expects to find it filled with his own production, and perhaps has called his companions to share the pleasure of a second perusal, I grieve for the disappointment which he is to feel at the fatal inspection. His hopes, however, do not yet forsake him; he is certain of giving lustre the next day. The next day comes, and again he pants with expectation, and having dreamed of laurels and Parnassus, casts his eyes upon the barren page, with which he is doomed never more to be delighted. Your late paper on frugality was very elegant and pleasing, but in my opinion, not sufficiently adapted to common readers, who pay little regard to the music of periods, the artifice of connexion, or the arrangement of the flowers of rhetoric; but require a few plain and cogent in structions, which may sink into the mind by their own weight. Frugality is so necessary to the happiness of the world, so beneficial in its various forms to every rank of men, from the highest of human potentates, to the lowest labourer or artificer; and the miseries which the neglect of it produces are so numerous and so grievous, that it ought to be recommended with every variation of address, and adapted to every class of understanding. Whether those who treat morals as a science will allow frugality to be numbered among the virtues, I have not thought it necessary to inquire. For I, who draw my opinions from a careful observation of the world, am satisfied with knowing what is abundantly sufficient for practice, that if it be not a virtue, it is, at least, a quality, which can seldom exist without some virtues, and For such cruelty what atonement can be made? without which few virtues can exist. Frugality For such calamities what alleviation can be found? may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the I am afraid that the mischief already done must sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. be without reparation, and all that deserves my He that is extravagant will quickly become poor, care is prevention for the future. Let therefore and poverty will enforce dependance, and invite the next friendly contributor, whoever he be, ob-corruption; it will almost always produce a passerve the cautions of Swift, and write secretly in his own chamber, without communicating his design to his nearest friend, for the nearest friend will be pleased with an opportunity of laughing. Let him carry it to the post himself, and wait in silence for the event. If it is published and praised, he may then declare himself the author; if it be suppressed, he may wonder in private without much vexation; and if it be censured, he may join in the cry, and lament the dulness of the writing generation. No. 57.] TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1750. sive compliance with the wickedness of others; and there are few who do not learn by degrees to practise those crimes which they cease to censure If there are any who do not dread poverty as dangerous to virtue, yet mankind seem unanimous enough in abhorring it as destructive to happiness; and all to whom want is terrible upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor. To most other acts of virtue or exertions of wisdom, a concurrence of many circumstances is necessary, some previous knowledge must be Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit par- attained, some uncommon gifts of nature pos simonia. TULL. I AM always pleased when I see literature made useful, and scholars descending from that elevation, which, as it raises them above common life, must likewise hinder them from beholding the ways of men otherwise than in a cloud of bustle and confusion. Having lived a life of business, and remarked how seldom any occurrences emerge for which great qualities are required, I have learned the necessity of regarding little things; and though I do not pretend to give laws to the legislators of mankind, or to limit the range of those powerful minds that carry light and heat through all the regions of knowledge, yet I have long thought, that the greatest part of those who lose themselves in studies by which I have not found that they grow much wiser, might, with more advantage both to the public and themselves apply their understandings to domestic arts, and store their minds with axioms of humble prudence and private economy. N sessed, or some opportunity produced by an extraordinary combination of things; but the mere power of saving what is already in our hands, must be easy of acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Bacon may show, that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances will every day prove, that the meanest may practise it with success. Riches cannot be within the reach of great numbers, because to be rich, is to possess more than is commonly placed in a single hand; and, if many could obtain the sum which now makes a man wealthy, the name of wealth must then be transferred to still greater accumulations. But I am not certain that it is equally impossible to exempt the lower classes of mankind from poverty; because, though whatever be the wealth of the community, some will always have least, and he that has less than any other is comparatively poor; yet I do not see any coactive necessity that many should be without the indispensable conveniences of life; but am sometimes inclined to imagine, that, casual calamities excepted, there might, by universal prudence, be procured a universal exemption from want; and that he who should happen to have least, might notwith-be, perhaps, imagined easy to comply; yet if But without entering too far into speculations which I do not remember that any political calculator has attempted, and in which the most perspicacious reasoner may be easily bewildered, it is evident that they to whom Providence has allotted no other care but of their own fortune and their own virtue, which make far the greater part of mankind, have sufficient incitements to personal frugality, since, whatever might be its general effect upon provinces or nations, by which it is never likely to be tried, we know with certainty, that there is scarcely any individual entering the world, who, by prudent parsimony, may not reasonably promise himself a cheerful competence in the decline of life. The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy -Improba Crescunt divitia, tamen Curta nescio quid semper abest rei. SOPHRON. and terrifying, that every man who looks before No. 58.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1750. HOR. But, while in heaps, his wicked wealth ascends, FRANCIS. As the love of money has been, in all ages, one You must not therefore think me sinking be- of the passions that have given great disturbance low the dignity of a practical philosopher, when to the tranquillity of the world, there is no topic I recommend to the consideration of your read more copiously treated by the ancient moralists ers, from the statesman to the apprentice, a posi- than the folly of devoting the heart to the accution replete with mercantile wisdom, A penny mulation of riches. They who are acquainted saved is two-pence got; which may, I think, be ac- with these authors need not be told how riches commodated to all conditions, by observing not excite pity, contempt, or reproach, whenever only that they who pursue any lucrative employ- they are mentioned; with what numbers of exment will save time when they forbear expense, amples the dangers of large possessions is illusand that the time may be employed to the in- trated; and how all the powers of reason and crease of profit; but that they who are above eloquence have been exhausted in endeavours to such minute considerations will find, by every eradicate a desire, which seems to have envictory over appetite or passion, new strength trenched itself too strongly in the mind to be added to the mind, will gain the power of refus-driven out, and which, perhaps, had not lost its ing those solicitations by which the young and vivacious are hourly assaulted, and in time set themselves above the reach of extravagance and folly. It may, perhaps, be inquired by those who are willing rather to cavil than to learn, what is the just measure of frugality? and when expense, not absolutely necessary, degenerates into profusion? To such questions no general answer can be returned; since the liberty of spending, or necessity of parsimony, may be varied without end, by different circumstances. It may, however, be laid down as a rule never to be broken, that a man's voluntary expense should not exceed his revenue.. A maxim so obvious and incontrovertible, that the civil law ranks the prodigal with the madman, and debars them equally from the conduct of their own affairs. Another precept arising from the former, and indeed included in it, is yet necessary to be distinctly impressed upon the warm, the fanciful, and the brave; Let no man anticipate uncertain profits. Let no man presume to spend upon hopes, to trust his own abilities for means of deliverance from penury, to give a loose to his present desires, and leave the reckoning to fortune or to virtue. power, even over those who declaimed against it, but would have broken out in the poet or the sage, if it had been excited by opportunity, and invigorated by the approximation of its proper object. Their arguments have been, indeed, so unsuccessful, that I know not whether it can be shown, that by all the wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth, a single convert was ever made; that even one man has refused to be rich, when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune; or disburdened himself of wealth when he had tried its inquietudes, merely to enjoy the peace and leisure and security of a mean and unenvied state. It is true, indeed, that many have neglected opportunities of raising themselves to honours and to wealth, and rejected the kindest offers of fortune; but however their moderation may be boasted by themselves, or admired by such as only view them at a distance, it will be, perhaps, seldom found that they value riches less, but that they dread labour or danger more than others; they are unable to rouse themselves to action, to strain the race of competition, or to stand the shock of contest; but though they, therefore, decline the toil of climbing, they neverthe.ess wish themselves aloft, and would willingly enjov To these cautions, which I suppose are, at Others have retired from high stations, and vo- | luntarily condemned themselves to privacy and obscurity. But even these will not afford many occasions of triumph to the philosopher, for they have commonly either quitted that only which they thought themselves unable to hold, and prevented disgrace by resignation; or they have been induced to try new measures by general inconstancy, which always dreams of happiness in novelty, or by a gloomy disposition, which is disgusted in the same degree with every state, and wishes every scene of life to change as soon as it is beheld. Such men found high and low stations equally unable to satisfy the wishes of a distempered mind, and were unable to shelter themselves in the closest retreat from disappointment, solicitude, and misery. life, by hindering that fraud and violence, rapine and circumvention, which must have been produced by an unbounded eagerness of wealth, arising from an unshaken conviction that to be rich is to be happy. Whoever finds himself incited, by some vio. lent impulse of passion, to pursue riches as the chief end of being, must surely be so much alarm ed by the successive admonitions of those whose experience and sagacity have recommended them as the guides of mankind, as to stop and consider whether he is about to engage in an undertaking that will reward his toil, and to examine, before he rushes to wealth, through right and wrong, what it will confer when he has acquired it; and his examination will seldom fail to repress his ardour, and retard his violence. Wealth is nothing in itself, it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase, which, if we suppose it put to its best use by those that possess it, seems not much to deserve the desire or envy of a wise man. It is certain that, with regard to corporeal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues to pleasure, nor block up the passages of anguish. Yet though these admonitions have been thus neglected by those, who either enjoyed riches, or were able to procure them, it is not rashly to be determined that they are altogether without use; for since far the greatest part of mankind must be confined to conditions comparatively mean, and placed in situations from which they naturally look up with envy to the eminences before them, those writers cannot be thought ill employed that have administered remedies to discontent almost Disease and infirmity still continue to torture universal, by showing, that what we cannot reach and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or may very well be forborne, that the inequality of promoted by softness. With respect to the mind, distribution, at which we murmur, is for the most it has rarely been observed, that wealth contripart less than it seems, and that the greatness,butes much to quicken the discernment, enlarge which we admire at a distance, has much fewer advantages, and much less splendour, when we are suffered to approach it. the capacity, or elevate the imagination; but may, by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity. Wealth cannot confer greatness, for nothing can make that great, which the decree of nature has ordained to be little. The bramble may be placed in a hot-bed, but can never become an oak. Even royalty itself is not able to give that dignity which it happens not to find, but oppresses feeble minds, though it may elevate the strong. The world has been governed in the name of kings, whose existence has scarcely been perceived by any real effects beyond their own palaces. It is the business of moralists to detect the frauds of fortune, and to show that she imposes upon the careless eye, by a quick succession of shadows, which will shrink to nothing in the gripe that she disguises life in extrinsic ornaments, which serve only for show, and are laid aside in the hours of solitude, and of pleasure; and that when greatness aspires either to felicity or to wisdom, it shakes off those distinctions which dazzle the gazer, and awe the supplicant. It may be remarked, that they whose condition When therefore the desire of wealth is taking has not afforded them the light of moral or reli- hold of the heart, let us look round and see how gious instruction, and who collect all their ideas it operates upon those whose industry or fortune by their own eyes, and digest them by their own has obtained it. When we find them oppressed understandings, seem to consider those who are with their own abundance, luxurious, without placed in ranks of remote superiority, as almost pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and queruanother and higher species of beings. As them-lous in themselves, and despised or hated by the selves have known little other misery than the consequences of want, they are with difficulty persuaded that where there is wealth there can be sorrow, or that those who glitter in dignity, and glide along in affluence, can be acquainted with pains and cares like those which lie heavy upon the rest of mankind. rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced, that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude, or desired with eagerness. This prejudice is, indeed, confined to the low- No. 59.] TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1750. est meanness, and the darkest ignorance; but it is so confined only because others have been shown its folly, and its falsehood, because it has been opposed in its progress by history and philosophy, and hindered from spreading its infection by powerful preservatives. The doctrine of the contempt of wealth, though it has not been able to extinguish avarice or ambition, or suppress that reluctance with which a man passes his days in a state of inferiority, must, at least, have made the lower conditions less grating and wearisome, and has consequently contributed to the general security of Est aliquid, fatale malum per verba levare: Complaining oft gives respite to our grief; OVID F. LEWIS Tis common to distinguish men by the names | tern commissions. For a genius in the crrch, of animals which they are supposed to resemble. he is always provided with a curacy for life. The Thus a hero is frequently termed a lion, and a lawyer he informs of many men of great parts statesman a fox, an extortioner gains the appella- and deep study, who have never had an opportution of vulture, and a fop the title of monkey. nity to speak in the courts: and meeting SereThere is also among the various anomalies of nus the physician," Ah, doctor," says he, "what, character, which a survey of the world exhibits, a-foot still, when so many blockheads are rata species of beings in human form, which may tling in their chariots? I told you seven years be properly marked out as the screech-owls of ago that you would never meet with encouragement, and I hope you will now take more notice, when I tell you that your Greek, and your diligence, and your honesty, will never enable you to live like yonder apothecary, who prescribes to his own shop, and laughs at the physician." mankind. These screech-owls seem to be settled in an opinion that the great business of life is to complain, and that they were born for no other purthan to disturb the happiness of others, to lessen the little comforts, and shorten the short | pleasures of our condition, by painful remembrances of the past, or melancholy prognostics of the future; their only care is to crush the rising hope, to damp the kindling transport, and allay the goiden hours of gayety with the hateful dross of grief and suspicion. To those whose weakness of spirits, or timidity of temper, subjects them to impressions from others, and who are apt to suffer by fascination, and catch the contagion of misery, it is extremely unhappy to live within the compass of a screechowl's voice; for it will often fill their ears in the hour of dejection, terrify them with apprehensions which their own thoughts would never have produced, and sadden, by intruded sorrows, the day which might have been passed in amusements or in business; it will burden the heart with unnecessary discontents, and weaken for a time that love of life which is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking. Though I have, like the rest of mankind, many failings and weaknesses, I have not yet, by either friends or enemies, been charged with superstition; I never count the company which I enter, and I look at the new moon indifferently over either shoulder. I have, like most other philosophers, often heard the cuckoo without money in my pocket, and have been sometimes reproached as fool-hardy for not turning down my eyes when a raven flew over my head. I never go home abruptly because a snake crosses my way, nor have any particular dread of a climacterical year: yet I confess that, with all my scorn of old women, and their tales, I consider it as an unhappy day when I happen to be greeted, in the morning, by Suspirius the screech-owl. I have now known Suspirius fifty-eight years and four months, and have never yet passed an hour with him in which he has not made some attack upon my quiet. When we were first acquainted, his great topic was the misery of youth without riches; and whenever we walked out together he solaced me with a long enumeration of pleasures, which, as they were beyond the reach of my fortune, were without the verge of my desires, and which I should never have considered as the objects of a wish, had not his unseasonable representations placed them in my sight. Suspirius has, in his time, intercepted fifteen authors in their way to the stage; persuaded nine and thirty merchants to retire from a prosperous trade for fear of bankruptcy, broke off a hundred and thirteen matches by prognostications of unhappiness, and enabled the small pox to kill nineteen ladies, by perpetual alarms of the loss of beauty. Whenever my evil stars bring us together, he never fails to represent to me the folly of my pursuits, and informs me that we are much older than when we begun our acquaintance, that the infirmities of decrepitude are coming fast upon me, that whatever I now get, I shall enjoy but a little time, that fame is to a man tottering on the edge of the grave of very little importance, and that the time is at hand when I ought to look for no other pleasures than a good dinner and an easy chair. Thus he goes on in his unharmonious strain, displaying present miseries, and foreboding more, vUKTIKópak ȧsì davaτnpopos, every syllable is loaded with misfortune, and death is always brought nearer to the view. Yet, what always raises my resentment and indignation, I do not perceive that his mournful meditations have much effect upon himself. He talks and has long talked of calamities, without discovering otherwise than by the tone of his voice that he feels any of the evils which he bewails or threatens, but has the same habit of uttering lamentations, as others of telling stories, and falls into expressions of condolence for past, or apprehension of future mischiefs, as all men studious of their ease have recourse to those subjects upon which they can most fluently or copiously discourse. It is reported of the Sybarites, that they destroyed all their cocks, that they might dream out their morning dreams without disturbance. Though I would not so far promote effeminacy as to propose the Sybarites for an example, yet since there is no man so corrupt or foolish, but something useful may be learned from him, I could wish that, in imitation of a people not often to be copied, some regulations might be made to exclude screech-owls from all company, as the enemies of mankind, and confine them to some proper receptacle, where they may mingle sighs at leisure, and thicken the gloom of one another. Another of his topics is the neglect of merit, Thou prophet of evil, says Homer's Agamemwith which he never fails to amuse every man non, thou never fortellest me good, but the joy of thy whom he sees not eminently fortunate. If he heart is to predict misfortunes. Whoever is of the meets with a young officer, he always informs same temper, might there find the means of inhim of gentlemen whose personal courage is un- dulging his thoughts, and improving his vein of questioned, and whose military skill qualifies denunciation, and the flock of screech-owls, them to command armies, that have, notwith-might hoot together without injury to the rest of standing all their merit, grown old with subal- the world. Yet, though I have so little kindness |