lute excellence as derived from truth, they can only please those who, when they read, exercise no faculty but fancy, and admire because they do not think.

"If I shall not be thought to digress wholly from my subject, I would illustrate this remark by comparing two passages written by Milton and Fletcher, on nearly the same subject. The spirit in Comus thus pays his address of thanks to the water-nymph Sabrina:

May thy brimmed wave for this
Their full tribute never miss,

From a thousand petty rills,

That tumble down their snowy hills:
Summer drought, or singed air,
Never scorch thy tresses fair;
Nor wet October's torrent flood
Thy molten crystal fill with mud.

Thus far the wishes are most proper for the welfare of a river goddess: the circumstance of summer not scorching her tresses is highly poetical and elegant: but what follows, though it is pompous and majestic, is unnatural and far fetched;

May thy billows roll ashore

The beryl and the golden ore:
May thy lofty head be crown'd

With many a tower and terras round;
And here and there, thy banks upon,
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon!

The circumstance in the third and fourth lines is happily fancied; but what idea can the reader have of an English river rolling Gold and the Beryl ashore, or of Groves of Cinnamon growing on its banks? The images in the following passage of Fletcher are all simple and real, all appropriated and strictly natural:

For thy kindness to me shown,
Never from thy banks be blown

Any tree with windy force,
Cross thy stream to stop thy course;
May no beast that comes to drink,
With his horns cast down thy brink;
May none that for thy fish do look,
Cut thy banks to dam thy brook;
Barefoot may no neighbour wade
In thy cool streams, wife or maid,
When the spawn on stones do lie,

To wash their hemp, and spoil the fry.

"The glaring picture of Paradise is not, in my opinion, so strong an evidence of Milton's force of imagination as his representation of Adam and Eve when they left it, and of the passions with which they were agitated on that event.

"Against his battle of the Angels, I have the same objections as against his garden of Eden. He has endeavoured to elevate his combatants by giving them the enormous stature of giants in romances, books of which he was known to be fond; and the prowess and behaviour of Michael as much resemble the feats of Ariosto's knight as his two-handed sword does the weapons of chivalry: I think the sublimity of his genius much more visible in the first appearance of the fallen angels; the debates of the infernal peers; the passage of Satan through the dominions of Chaos, and his adventure with Sin and Death; the mission of Raphael to Adam; the conversations between Adam and his wife: the creation; the account which Adam gives of his first sensations, and of the approach of Eve from the hand of her Creator; the whole behaviour of Adam and Eve after the first transgression; and the prospect of the various states of the world, and history of man, exhibited in a vision to Adam.

"In this vision, Milton judiciously represents Adam as ignorant of what disaster had befallen Abel when he was murdered by his brother; but,

truly dramatic speech, that is, perhaps, to be found in any writer, whether ancient or modern; and yet Mr. Addison has passed it over, unpraised and unnoticed.

"If an apology should be deemed necessary for the freedom here used with our inimitable bard, let me conclude in the words of Longinus: Whoever was carefully to collect the blemishes of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and of other celebrated writers of the same rank, would find they bore not the least proportion to the sublimities and excellences with which their works abound.'

Z.

" I am, sir,

"Your humble servant,

1

"PALEOPHILUS."

No. 102. SATURDAY, OCT. 27, 1753.

Quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te

Conatus non pæniteat, votique peracti?

Juv.

What in the conduct of our life appears

So well design'd, so luckily begun,

But, when we have our wish, we wish undone?

DRYDEN.

"SIR,

"TO THE ADVENTURER.

"I HAVE been for many years a trader in London. My beginning was narrow, and my stock small; I was, therefore, a long time browbeaten and despised 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 hopes of becoming in a short time one of the directors of a wealthy company; and, to complete my mercantile honours, enjoyed the expensive happiness of fining for sheriff.

Riches, you know, easily produce riches; when I had arrived to this degree of wealth, I had no longer any obstruction or opposition to fear; new acquisitions were hourly brought within my reach, and I continued for some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands.

66

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 retirement.— From 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 thought 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 traveled over, without discovery of a place which would not have been defective 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 commenced 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 inclosed 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