cation of a polished age should, like the drapery of a fine statue or portrait, confer decency, propriety, and elegance, and gracefully veil, but by no means conceal, the beautiful forms of nature.

LÆLIUS.

No. 23. TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1779.

Et isti

Errori nomen virtus posuisset honestum.

HOR.

I WAS lately applied to by a friend in behalf of a gentleman, who, he said, had been unfortunate in life, to whom he was desirous of doing a particular piece of service, in which he thought my assistance might be useful: Poor fellow!' said he, 'I wish to serve him, because I always knew him, dissipated and thoughtless as he was, to be a good-hearted man, guilty of many imprudent things, indeed, but without meaning any harm! In short, no one's enemy but

his own.'

I afterwards learned more particularly the circumstances of this gentleman's life and conversation, which I will take the liberty of laying before my readers, in order to show them what they are to understand by the terms used by my friend; terms which, I believe, he was nowise singular in using.

The person whose interests he espoused was heir to a very considerable estate. He lost his father

when an infant; and being, unfortunately, an only son, was too much the darling of his mother ever to be contradicted. During his childhood he was not suffered to play with his equals, because he was to be the king of all sports, and to be allowed a sovereign and arbitrary dominion over the persons and properties of his play-fellows. At school he was attended by a servant, who helped him to thrash boys who were too strong to be thrashed by himself; and had a tutor at home, who translated the Latin which was too hard for him to translate. At college he began to assume the man, by treating at taverns, making parties to the country, filling his tutor drunk, and hiring blackguards to break the windows of the professor with whom he was boarded. He took in succession the degrees of a wag, a pickle, and a lad of mettle. For a while, having made an elopement with his mother's maid, and fathered three children of other people, he got the appellation of a dissipated dog; but, at last, betaking himself entirely to the bottle, and growing red-faced and fat, he obtained the denomination of an honest fellow; which title he continued to enjoy as long as he had money to pay, or indeed much longer, while he had credit to score for his reckoning.

During this last part of his progress he married a poor girl, whom her father, from a mistaken idea of his fortune, forced to sacrifice herself to his wishes.

After a very short space he grew too indifferent about her to use her ill, and broke her heart with the bestnatured neglect in the world. Of two children whom he had by her, one died at nurse soon after the death of its mother; the eldest, a boy of spirit like his father, after twice running away from school, was at last sent aboard a Guinea-man, and was knocked on the head by a sailor, in a quarrel about a negro wench, on the coast of Africa.

Generosity, however, was a part of his character, which he never forfeited. Beside lending money genteelly to many worthless companions, and becoming surety for every man who asked him, he did some truly charitable actions to very deserving objects. These were told to his honour; and people who had met with refusals from more considerate men spoke of such actions as the genuine test of feeling and humanity. They misinterpreted scripture for indulgence to his errors on account of his charity, and extolled the goodness of his heart in every company where he was mentioned. Even while his mother, during her last illness, was obliged to accept of money from her physician, because she could not obtain payment of her jointure, and while, after her decease, his two sisters were dunning him every day, without effect, for the small annuity left them by their father, he was called a good-hearted man by three-fourths of his acquaintance; and when, after having pawned their clothes, rather than distress him, those sisters commenced a law-suit to force him to do them justice, the same impartial judges pronounced them hardhearted and unnatural: nay, the story is still told to their prejudice, though they now prevent their brother from starving, out of the profits of a little shop which they were then obliged to set up for their support.

The abuse of the terms used by my friend, in regard to the character of this unfortunate man, would be sufficiently striking from the relation I have given, without the necessity of my offering any comment on it. Yet the misapplication of them is a thousand times repeated by people who have known and felt instances, equally glaring, of such injustice. It may seem invidious to lessen the praises of any praiseworthy quality; but it is essential to the interests of virtue that insensibility should not be allowed to as

sume the title of good-nature, nor profusion to usurp the honours of generosity.

The effect of such misplaced and ill-founded indulgence is hurtful in a double degree. It encourages the evil which it forbears to censure, and discourages the good qualities which are found in men of decent and sober characters. If we look into the private histories of unfortunate families, we shall find most of their calamities to have proceeded from a neglect of the useful duties of sobriety, economy, and attention to domestic concerns, which, though they shine not in the eye of the world, nay, are often subject to its obloquy, are yet the surest guardians of virtue, of honour, and of independence.

Be just before you are generous is a good old proverb, which the profligate hero of a much admired comedy is made to ridicule, in a well-turned, and even a sentimental period. But what right have those squanderers of their own and other men's fortunes to assume the merit of generosity? Is parting with that money, which they value so little, generosity? Let them restrain their dissipation, their riot, their debauchery, when they are told that these bring ruin on the persons and families of the honest and the industrious; let them sacrifice one pleasure to humanity, and then tell us of their generosity and their feeling. A transient instance, in which the prodigal relieved want with his purse, or the thoughtless debauchee promoted merit by his interest, no more deserves the appellation of generosity than the rashness of a drunkard is entitled to the praises of valour, or the freaks of a madman to the laurels of genius.

In the character of a man, considered as a being of any respect at all, we immediately see a relation to his friends, his neighbours, and his country. His duties only confer real dignity, and, what may not be

so easily allowed, but is equally true, can bestow real pleasure. I know not an animal more insignificant, or less happy, than a man without any ties of affection, or any exercise of duty. He must be very forlorn, or very despicable, indeed, to whom it is possible to apply the phrase used by my friend in characterising the person whose story I have related above, and to say, that he is no one's enemy but his own.

V.

1779.

No. 24. SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1779.

Non satis est pulchra esse poëmata ; dulcia sunto.

HOR.

We can, as often as

NATURE is for ever before us. we please, contemplate the variety of her productions, and feel the power of her beauty. We may feast our imaginations with the verdure of waving groves, the diversified colours of an evening sky, or the windings of a limpid river. We may dwell with rapture on those more sublime exhibitions of nature, the raging tempest, the billowy deep, or the stupendous precipice, that lift the soul with delightful amazement, and seem almost to suspend her exertions.

These

beautiful and vast appearances are so capable of affording pleasure, that they become favourite subjects with the poet and the painter; they charm us in description, or they glow upon canvas. Indeed, the imitations of eminent artists have been held on an equal footing, in regard to the pleasure they yield, with the works of Nature herself, and have some