B CHAPTER EIGHT A DISSERTATION UPON MAGIC. UT before we proceed to our disquisitions concerning the power and efficacy of natural magic, and examine what mysterious operations may be brought about and compassed by magical practices, and before we take a further survey of what Mr. Campbell has performed in this kind, that relates to his profession and the public part of his life, which concerns other people as well as himself, I shall here relate some singular adventures that he passed through in his private life, and which regard only his own person. In order to this, I must return back to the year 1702, about which time some unaccountable turns of fortune attended him in his own private capacity, which must be very surprising and entertaining to my readers, when they find a man, whose foresight was always so great a help and assistance to others who consulted him in their own future affairs, helpless (as it has been an observation concerning all such men in the account of the second-sight), and blind in his own future affairs, tossed up and down by inevitable and spiteful accidents of fortune, and made the May-game of chance and hazard; as if that wayward and inconstant goddess was resolved to punish him, when she catched him on the blind side, for having such a quick insight and penetrating faculty in other people's matters, and scrutinising too narrowly into her mysteries, and so sometimes preventing those fatal intentions of hers, into which she would fain lead many mortals hoodwinked, and before they knew where they were. In this light, these mighty and famous seers seem to be born for the benefit and felicity of others, but at the same time to be born to unhappiness themselves. And certainly, inasmuch as we consider them as useful and beneficial, often, but always satisfactory, to persons who are curious in their inquiries about their fortunes, it will be natural to those of us, who have the least share of generosity in our minds, to yield our pity and compassion to them, when they are remarkably unfortunate themselves, especially when that calamity seems more particularly to light upon them for their ability and endeavour to consult the good fortune of other folks. About the above-mentioned year 1702, Duncan Campbell grew a little tired of his profession. Such a multitude of followers troubled him, several of whom were wild youths and came to banter him, and many more too inquisitive females, to tease him with endless impertinences, and who, the more he told them, had still the more to ask, and whose curiosity was never to be satisfied; and besides this he was so much envied, and had so many malicious artifices daily practised against him, that he resolved to leave off his profession. He had, I know, followed it pretty closely, from the time I first saw him in London, which was, I think, in the beginning of the year 1698, till the year 1702, with very good success; and in those few years, he had got together a pretty round sum of money. Our young seer was now at man's estate, and had learned the notion that he was to be his own governor, so far as to be his own counsellor too in what road of life he was to take; and this consideration, no doubt, worked with deeper impression on his mind than it usually does on others that are in the same blossoming pride of manhood, because it might appear more natural for him to believe that he had a sufficient ability to be his own proper adviser, who had given so many others, and some more aged than himself, counsel with very good success. Now every experienced person knows that when manhood is yet green it is still in the same dangerous condition as a young plant, which is liable to be warped by a thousand cross fortuitous accidents if good measures be not taken to support it against all the contingent shocks it may meet with from the weather or otherwise. Now, it was his misfortune to be made averse to business which he loved before by having too much of it, and to be so soured by meeting with numerous perplexities and malicious rubs laid in his way by invidious people (who are the useless and injurious busybodies, that always repine at the good of others, and rejoice to do harm to the diligent and assiduous, though they reap no profit by it themselves), that he was disgusted and deterred entirely from the prosecution of a profession, by which he got not only a competent but a copious and plentiful subsistence. Nay, indeed, this was another mischief arising to him from his having so much business that he had got money enough to leave it off, when the perplexities of it had made him willing to do so, and to live very comfortably and handsomely like a gentleman without it for a time; and we know the youngest men are not wont to look the furthest before them in matters that concern their own welfare. Now, inasmuch as he had thus taken a disgust to business and application, and was surfeited (as I may say) with the perplexities of it, it must be as natural for him, we know, to search for repose in the contrary extreme, viz., recreation and idleness, as it is for a man to seek rest after toil, to sleep after a day's labour, or to sit down after a long and tiresome walk. But there are two very distinct sorts of idleness, and two very different kinds of recreations; there is a shameful idleness which is no better than downright sloth; and there is a splendid kind of indolence where a man, having taken an aversion to the wearisomeness of a business which properly belongs to him, neglects not, however, to employ his thoughts, when they are vacant from what they ought more chiefly to be about, in other matters not entirely unprofitable in life, the exercise of which he finds he can follow with more abundant ease and satisfaction. There are some sorts of recreations too that are mean, sordid and base; others that are very innocent, though very diverting, and that will give one the very next most valuable qualifications of a gentleman after those which are obtained by a more serious application of the mind. The idea which I have already given my readers of our Duncan Campbell will easily make them judge before I tell them, which way, in these two ways, his genius would naturally lead him; and that when he grew an idle man he would rather indulge himself with applying his mind to the shining trifles of life than be wholly slothful and inactive; and that when he diverted himself he would not do it after a sordid base manner, as having a better taste and a relish for good company, but that his recreations would still be the recreations of a gentleman. And just accordingly as my readers would naturally judge beforehand in his case, so it really happened. The moment he shook off business, and dismissed the thoughts of it, his genius led him to a very gallant way of life; in his lodgings, in his entertainments, in paying and receiving visits, in coffee-houses, in taverns, in fencing-schools, in balls, and other public assemblies, in all ways, in fine, both at home and abroad, Duncan Campbell was a wellcomported and civil gentleman; he was a man of pleasure, and nothing of the man of business appeared about him. But a gentleman's life without a gentleman's estate, however shining and pleasant it may be for a time, will certainly end in sorrow, if not in infamy; and, comparing life, as moralists do, to a day, one may safely pronounce this truth to all the splendid idlers I have mentioned, that if they have sunshiny weather till noon, yet the afternoon of their life will be very stormy, rainy, and uncomfortable; and perhaps just at the end of their journey, to carry on the metaphor throughout, close in the darkest kind of night. Of this, as I was a man of years, and more experienced in the world than he, I took upon me to |
