46 It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit ; but the truth is that there is very little hypocrisy in the world; we do not so often endeavour or wish to impose on others as ourselves; we resolve to do right, we hope to keep our resolutions, we declare them to confirm our own hope, and fix our own inconstancy, by calling witnesses of our actions; but at last habit prevails, and those whom we invited to our triumph, laugh at our defeat. Custom is commonly too strong for the most resolute resolver, though furnished for the assault with all the weapons of philosophy. "He that endeavours to free him"self from an ill habit," says Bacon, "must not change too much at a time, "lest he should be discouraged by difficulty; nor too little, for then he will "make but slow advances." This is a precept which may be applauded in a book, but will fail in the trial, in which every change will be found too great or too little. Those who have been able to conquer habit, are like those that are fabled to have returned from the realms of Pluto: Pauci, quos æquus amavit. Jupiter, atque ardens evexit ad æthera virtus, They are sufficient to give hope but not security, to animate the contest but not to promise victory. Those who are in the power of evil ha bits, must conquer them as they can, and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence, may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom, they may effectually resolve to escape the tyrant, whom they will very vainly resolve to conquer. Idler. § 64. Halfpenny, its adventures. "Sir, "I shall not pretend to conceal from you the illegitimacy of my birth, or the baseness of my extraction: and though I seem to bear the venerable marks of old age, I received my being at Birmingham not six months ago. From thence I was transported with many of my brethren of different dates, characters, and configurations, to a Jew pedlar in Duke's place, who paid for us in specie scarce a fifth part of our nominal and extrinsic value. We were soon after separately disposed of, at a more moderate profit, to coffee-houses, chop houses, chandler's-shops, and gin shops. I had not been long in the world before an ingenious transmuter of metals laid violent hands on me; and observing my thin shape and flat surface, by the help of a little quicksilver exalted me into a shilling. Use, however, soon degraded me again to my native low station; and I unfortunately fell into the possession of an urchin just breeched, who received me as a Christmas-box of his godmother. "A love of money is ridiculously instilled into children so early, that before they can possibly comprehend the use of it they consider it as of great value: I lost therefore the very essence of my being, in the custody of this hopeful disciple of avarice and folly; and was kept only to be looked at and admired? but a bigger boy after a while, snatched me from him, and released me from my confinement. "I now underwent various hardships among his play-fellows, and was kicked about, hustled, tossed up, and chucked into holes, which very much battered and impaired me; but I suffered most by the pegging of tops, the marks of which I have borne about me to this day. I was in this state the unwitting cause of rapacity; strife, envy, rancour, malice, and revenge, among the little apes of mankind; and became the object and the nurse of those passions which disgrace human nature, while I appeared only to engage children in innocent pastimes. At length I was dismissed from their service, by a throw with a barrow-woman for an orange. "From her it is natural to conclude I posted to the gin-shop; where, indeed, it is probable I should have immediately gone, if her husband, a foot-soldier, had not wrested me from her, at the expence of a bloody nose, black eye, scratched face, and torn regimentals. By him I was carried to the Mall in St. James's Park, where I am ashamed to tell how I parted from him-let it suffice that I was soon after deposited in a night-cellar. "From hence I got into the coat-pocket of a blood, and remained there with several of my brethren for some days unnoticed. But one evening as he was reeling home from the tavern, he jerked a whole handful of us through a sash-window into the dining-room of a tradesman, who he remembered had been so unmannerly to him the day before as to desire payment of his bill. We reposed in soft ease on a fine Turkey carpet till the next morning, when the maid swept us up; and some of us 3 E 2 were allotted to purchase tea, some to buy snuff, and I myself was immediately trucked away at the door for the Sweet heart's Delight. 66 "It is not my design to enumerate every little accident that has befallen me, or to dwell upon trivial and indifferent circumstances, as is the practice of those important egotists, who write narratives, memoits, and travels. As useless to community as my single self may appear to be, I have been the instrument of much good and evil in the intercourse of mankind; I have contributed no small sum to the revenues of the crown, by my share in each newspaper; and in the consumption of tobacco, spirituous liquors, and other tax able commodities. If I have encouraged debauchery, or supported extravagance, I have also rewarded the labours of industry, and relieved the necessities of indigence. The poor acknowledge me as their constant friend; and the rich, though they affect to slight me, and treat me with contempt, are often reduced by their ful lies to distresses which it is even in my power to relieve. The present exact scrutiny into our constitution has, indeed, very much obstructed and embarrassed iny travels; though I could not but rejoice in my condition last Tuesday, as I was debarred having any share in maiming, bruising, and destroying the innocent victims of vulgar barbarity; I was happy in being confined to the mock encounters with feathers and stuffed leather; a childish sport, rightly calculated to initiate tender minds in acts of cruelty, and prepare them for the exercise of inhumanity on helpless animals. "I shall conclude, Sir, with informing you by what means I came to you in the condition you see. A choice spirit, a member of the killcare club, broke a link boy's pate with me last night, as a reward for lighting him across the kennel; the lad wasted half his tar flambeau in looking for me; but I escaped his search, being lodged snugly against a post. This morning a parish girl picked me up, and carried me with raptures to the next baker's shop to purchase a roll. The master, who was churchwarden, examined me with great attention, and then gruffly threatening her with Bridewell for putting off bad money, knocked a nail through my middle, and fastened me to the counter: but the mo ment the poor hungry child was gone, he whipt me up again, and sending me away with others in change to the next customer, gave me this opportunity of relating my adventures to you." Adventurer. $65. History; our natural Fondness for it, and its true Use. The love of history seems inseparable from human nature, because it seems inst parable from self-love. The same princi ple in this instance carrics us forward and backward to future and to past ages. We imagine that the things which affect us, must affect posterity; this sentiment runs through mankind, from Cæsar down to the parish-clerk in Pope's Miscellany. We are fond of preserving, as far as it is in our frail power, the memory of our own adventures, of those of our own time, and of those that preceded it. Rude heaps of stones have been raised, and ruder hymns have been composed, for this purpose, by nations who had not yet the use of arts and letters. To go no further back, the triumphs of Odin were celebrated in Runic songs, and the feats of our British ancestors were recorded in those of their bards. The savages of America have the same custom at this day: and long historical ballads of their hunting and wars are sung at all their festivals. There is no need of saying how this passion grows among all civilized nations, in proportion to the means of gratifying it but let us observe, that the same principle of nature directs us as strongly and more generally, as well as more early. to indulge our own curiosity, instead of preparing to gratify that of others. The child hearkens with delight to the tales of his nurse; he learns to read; and he devours with eagerness fabulous legends and novels. In riper years he applies to history, or to that which he takes for history, to authorized romance; and even in age the desire of knowing what has happened to other men, yields to the desire alone of relating what has happened to ourselves. Thus history, true or false, speaks to eur passions always. What pity is it that even the best should speak to our understanding so seldom! That it does so, we have nout to blame but ourselves. Nature has done her part. She has opened this study to every man who can read and think: and what she has made the most agreeable. reason can make the most useful applica tion of to our minds. But if we consult our reason, we shall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures, in this as in most other cases, who are so proud of being rational. We shall neither read to sooth our indolence, nor to gratify our vanity as little shall we content ourselves to drudge like grammarians and crities, that others may be able to study, with greater case and profit, like philosophers and statesmen; as little shall we affect the slender merit of becoming great scholars at the exrence of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these mistake the true drift of study, and the true use of history. Nature gave us curiosity to excite the industry of our minds, but she never intended it to be made the principal, much less the sole object of their application. The true and proper object of this application, is a constant improvement in private and in public virtue. An application to any study, that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men, and bet. ter citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, to use an, expression of Tillotson: and the knowledge we acquire is a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. This creditable Kind of ignorance is, in my opinion, the whole benefit which the generality of men, even of the most learned, reap from the study of history: and yet the study of history seems to me, of all other, the most proper to train us up to private and public virtue. We need but to cast our eyes on the world, and we shall see the daily force of example: we need but to turn them inward, and weshall soon discover why example has this force. Pauci prudentia, says Tacitus, honesta ab deterioribus, utilia abnoxiis discernunt: plures aliorum eventis docentur. Such is the imperfection of human understanding, such the frail temper of our minds, that abstract or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often, till they are explained by examples: and that the wisest lessons in favour of virtue go but a little way to convince the judgment and cre is a kind of appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our senses, as well as our understandings. The instruction comes then upon our own authority: we frame the precept after our own experience, and yield to fact when we resist speculation. But this is not the only advantage of instruction by example; for example appeals not to our understanding alone, but to our passions likewise. Example assuages these or animates them; sets passion on the side of judgment, and makes the whole man of a-piece, which is more than the strongest reasoning and the clearest demonstration can do; and thus forming habits by repetitions, example secures the observance of those precepts which example insinuated. Bolingbroke. § 66. IIuman Nature, its Dignity. see a creature, whose In forming our notions of human nature we are very apt to make comparison betwixt men and animals, which are the only creatures endowed with thought, that fall under our senses. Certainly this comparison is very favourable to mankind; on the one hand, we thoughts are not limited by any narrow bounds either of place or time, who car ries his researches into the most distant regions of this globe, and beyond this globe, to the planets and heavenly bodies; looks backward to consider the first origin of the human race; casts his eyes forwards to see the influence of his actions upon posterity, and the judgments which will be formed of his character a thousand years hence: a creature who traces causes and effects to great lengths and intricacy; extracts general principles from particular appearances; improves upon his discoveries, corrects his mistakes, and make his very errors profitable. hand, we are presented with a creature the very reverse of this; limited in its observations and reasonings to a few sensible objects which surround it; without curiosity, without a foresight, blindly conducted by instinct, and arriving in a very short time at its utmost perfection, beyond which it is never able to advance a single step. What a difference is there betwixt these creatures; and how exalted a notion must we entertain of the former, in comHume's Essays. parison of the latter. On the other 67. The Operations of Human Nature considered. fecting each other. Their operations inTheir operations indeed are entirely different. Whether the immortal spirit that enlivens this machine, is originally of a superior nature in various bodies (which, I own, seems most consistent and agreeable to the scale and order acts with the utmost generosity, and with no view to her own advantage: while Vice, like a glutton, feeds herself enormously, and then is willing to disgorge the nau scous offals of her feast. Orrery. genius. of beings), or whether the difference de- $68. Economy, Want of it no Mark of pends on a symmetry, or peculiar structure of the organs combined with it, is beyond my reach to determine. It is evidently certain, that the body is curiously formed larly of poets, has long been the object of with proper organs to delight, and such as are adapted to all the necessary uses of life. The spirit animates the whole; it guides the natural appetites, and confines them within just limits. But the natural force of this spirit is often immersed in matter; and the mind becomes subservient to passions, which it ought to govern and direct. Your friend Horace, although of the Epicurean doctrine, acknowledges this truth, where he says, Atque affigit humo divinæ particulam auræ. It is no less evident, that this immortal spirit has an independent power of acting, and, when cultivated in a proper manner, seemingly quits the corporeal frame within. which it is imprisoned, and soars into higher and more spacious regions; where, with an energy which I had almost said was divine, it ranges among those heavenly bodies that in this lower world are scarce visible to our eyes; and we can at once explain the distance, magnitude, and vélocity of the planets, and can foretel, even to a degree of minuteness, the particular time when a comet will return, and when the sun will be eclipsed in the next century. These powers certainly evince the dignity of human nature, and the surprising effects of the immaterial spirit within us, which in so contined a state can thus disengage itself from the fetters of matter. It is from this pre-eminence of the soul over the body, that we are enabled to view the exact or der and curious variety of different beings; to consider and cultivate the natural productions of the earth; and to admire and imitate the wise benevolence which reigns throughout the sole system of the universe. It is from hence that we form moral laws for our conduct. From hence we delight in copying that great original, who in his essence is utterly incomprehensible, but in his influence is powerfully apparent to eyery degree of his creation. From hence too we perceive a real beauty in virtue, and a distinction between good and evil. Virtue The indigence of authors, and particu lainentation and ridicule, of compassion and contempt. It has been observed, that not one favourite of the muses has ever been able to build a house since the days of Amphion, whose art it would be fortunate for them if they possessed; and that the greatest punishment that can possibly be inflicted on them, is to oblige them to sup in their own lodgings. Molles ubi reddunt ova columba, Where pigeons lay their eggs. Boileau introduces Damon, whose writ ings entertained and instructed the city and the court, as having passed the summer without a shirt, and the winter without a cloak; and resolving at last to forsake Paris, où la vertu n'a plus ni feu ni lieu, Where shivering worth no longer finds a home. and to find out a retreat in some distant grotto, Safe, where no critics damn, no duns molest. The rich comedian, says Bruyere, “lolling in his gilt chariot, bespatters the face of Corneille walking afoot:" and Juvenal remarks, that his contemporary bards generally qualified themselves by their diet to make excellent bustos; that they were compelled sometimes to hire lodgings ats baker's in order to warm themselves for nothing; and that it was the common fate Pallere & vinum toto nescire Decembri, Virgil himself is strongly suspected to have lain in the streets, or on some Roman bulk, when he speaks so feelingly of a rainy and tempestuous night in his wellknown epigram. "There ought to be an hospital founded for decayed wits," said a lively French The patronage of Lælius and Scipio did not enable Terence to rent a house. Tasso, in a humorous sonnet addressed to his favourite cat, earnestly entreats her to lend him the light of her eyes during his midnight studies, not being himself able to purchase a candle to write by. Dante, the ilomer of Italy, and Camoens of Portugal, were both banished and imprisoned. Cervantes, perhaps the most original genius the world ever beheld, perished by want in the streets of Madrid, as did our own Spenser at Dublin. And a writer little inferior to the Spaniard in the exquisiteness of his humour and raillery, I mean Erasmus, after tedious wandering of many years from city to city, and from patron to patron, praised, and promised, and deceived by all, obtained no settlement but with his printer. "At last," says he, in one of his epistles, "I should have been advanced to a cardinalship, if there had not been a decree in my way, by which those are excluded from this honour, whose income amounts not to three thousand ducats." I remember to have read a satire in Latin prose intitled, "A poet hath bought a house." The poet having purchased a house, the matter was immediately laid before the parliament of poets assembled on that important occasion, as a thing unheardof, as a very bad precedent, and of most pernicious consequences; and accordingly a very severe sentence was pronounced against the buyer. When the members came to give their votes, it appeared there was not a single person in the assembly, who, through the favour of powerful patrons, or their own happy genius, was worth so much as to be proprietor of to be proprietor of a house, either by inheritance or purchase; all of them neglecting their private fortunes, confessed and boasted that they lived in lodgings. The poet was, therefore, ordered to sell his house immediately, to buy wine with the money for their entertainment, in order to make some ex piation for this enormous crime, and to teach him to live unsettled, and without care, like a true poct. Such are the ridiculous, and such the pitiable stories related, to expose the poverty of poets in different ages and nations; but which, I am inclined to think, are rather boundless exaggerations of satire and fancy, than the sober result of experience, and the determination of truth and judgment; for the general position may be contradicted by numerous examples; and it may, perhaps, appear on reflection and examination, that the art is not chargeable with the faults and failings of its particular professors; that it has no peculiar tendency to make them either rakes or spendthrifts: and that those who are indigent poets, would have been indigent merchants and mechanics. The neglect of œconomy, in which great geniuses are supposed to have indulged themselves, has unfortunately given so much authority and justification to carelessness and extravagance, that many a minute rhymer has fallen to dissipation and drunkenness, because Butler and Otway lived and died in the alehouse. As a certain blockhead wore his gown on one shoulder, to mimic the negligence of Sir Thomas More, so these servile imitators follow their masters in all that disgrace them; contract immoderate debts, because Dryden died insolvent; and neglect to change their linen, because Smith was a sloven. "If I should happen to look pale," says Horace," all the hackney writers in Rome would immediately drink cummin to gain the same complexion." And I myself am acquainted with a witling, who uses a glass only because Pope was near-sighted. Adventurer. § 69. Operas ridiculed, in a Persian Letter. The first objects of a stranger's curiosity are the public spectacles. I was carried last night to one they call an Opera, which is a concert of music brought from Italy, and in every respect foreign to this country. It was performed in a chamber as magnificent as the resplendent palace of our emperor, and as full of handsome women, as his seraglio. They had no eunuchs among them; but there was one who sung upon the stage, and by the luxurious tenderness of his airs, seemed fitter to make them wanton, than keep them chaste. Instead of the habit proper to such crea tures, |