them; nor can the most circumspect attention, | his opinion be received as decisive and oraculous. or steady rectitude, escape blame from censors His intoxication will give way to time; the madwho have no inclination to approve. Riches ness of joy will fume imperceptibly away; the therefore, perhaps, do not so often produce sense of his insufficiency will soon return; he crimes as incite accusers. will remember that the co-operation of others is necessary to his happiness, and learn to conciliate their regard by reciprocal beneficence.

There is, at least, one consideration which ought to alleviate our censures of the powerful and rich. To imagine them chargeable with all the guilt and folly of their own actions, is to be very little acquainted with the world. De l'absolu pouvoir vous ignorez l'yvresse, Et du lache flateur la voix enchanteresse. Thou hast not known the giddy whirls of fate, Nor servile flatteries which enchant the great.

MISS A. W.

The common charge against those who rise above their original condition, is that of pride. It is certain that success naturally confirms us in a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit. But captiousness and jealousy are likewise easily offended, and to him who studiously looks for an He that can do much good or harm will not affront, every mode of behaviour will supply it; find many whom ambition or cowardice will freedom will be rudeness, and reserve sullen- suffer to be sincere. While we live upon the ness; mirth will be negligence, and seriousness level with the rest of mankind, we are reminded formality; when he is received with ceremony, of our duty by the admonitions of friends and redistance and respect are inculcated; if he is proaches of enemies; but men who stand in the treated with familiarity, he concludes himself highest ranks of society, seldom hear of their insulted by condescensions. faults; if by any accident an opprobrious clamour It must however be confessed, that as all sud-reaches their ears, flattery is always at hand to den changes are dangerous, a quick transition pour in her opiates, to quiet conviction, and obfrom poverty to abundance can seldom be made with safety. He that has long lived within sight of pleasures which he could not reach, will need more than common moderation, not to lose his reason in unbounded riot, when they are first put into his power.

Every possession is endeared by novelty every gratification is exaggerated by desire. It is difficult not to estimate what is lately gained above its real value; it is impossible not to annex greater happiness to that condition from which we are unwillingly excluded, than nature has qualified us to obtain. For this reason, the remote inheritor of an unexpected fortune may be generally distinguished from those who are enriched in the common course of lineal descent, by his greater haste to enjoy his wealth, by the finery of his dress, the pomp of his equipage, the splendour of his furniture, and the luxury of his

table.

A thousand things which familiarity discovers to be of little value, have power for a time to seize the imagination. A Virginian king, when the Europeans had fixed a lock on his door, was so delighted to find his subjects admitted or excluded with such facility, that it was from morning to evening his whole employment to turn the key. We, among whom locks and keys have been longer in use, are inclined to laugh at this American amusement; yet I doubt whether this paper will have a single reader that may not apply the story to himself, and recollect some hours of his life in which he has been equally overpowered by the transitory charms of trifling novelty.

Some indulgence is due to him whom a happy gale of fortune has suddenly transported into new regions, where unaccustomed lustre dazzles his eyes, and untasted delicacies solicit his appetite. Let him not be considered as lost in hopeless degeneracy, though he for a while forgets the regard due to others, to indulge the contemplation of himself, and in the extravagance of his first raptures expects that his eye should regulate the motions of all that approach him, and

tund remorse.

Favour is seldom gained but by conformity in vice. Virtue can stand without assistance, and considers herself as very little obliged by countenance and approbation; but vice, spiritless and timorous, seeks the shelter of crowds, and support of confederacy. The sycophant, therefore, neglects the good qualities of his patron, and employs all his art on his weakness and follies, regales his reigning vanity, or stimulates his prevalent desires.

Virtue is sufficiently difficult with any circumstances, but the difficulty is increased when reproof and advice are frighted away. In common life, reason and conscience have only the appetites and passions to encounter; but in higher stations they must oppose artifice and adulation. He, therefore, that yields to such temptations, cannot give those who look upon his miscarriage much reason for exultation, since few can justly presume that from the same snare they should have been able to escape.

HOR.

- Quo virtus, quo ferat error. Now say, where virtue stops, and vice begins? As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of an artisan by his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders: and there are few among men of the more liberal professions, whose minds do not carry the brand of their calling, or whose conversation does not quickly discover to what class of the community they belong.

These peculiarities have been of great use, in the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest, to furnish insults and sarcasms. Every art has its dialect, uncouth and ungrateful to all whom custom has not reconciled to its sound, and which therefore be

THE RAMBLER.

comes ridiculous by a slight misapplication, or
unnecessary repetition.

The general reproach with which ignorance
revenges the superciliousness of learning, is that
of pedantry; a censure which every man incurs,
who has at any time the misfortune to talk to
those who cannot understand him, and by which
the modest and timorous are sometimes frighted
from the display of their acquisitions, and the ex-
ertion of their powers.

The name of a pedant is so formidable to young men when they first sally from their colleges, and is so liberally scattered by those who mean to boast their elegance of education, easiness of manners, and knowledge of the world, that it seems to require particular consideration; since, perhaps, if it were once understood, many a heart might be freed from painful apprehensions, and many a tongue delivered from restraint.

Pedantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject, or in the manner of treating it. He is undoubtedly guilty of pedantry, who, when he has made himself master of some abstruse and uncultivated part of knowledge, obtrudes his remarks and discoveries upon those whom he believes unable to judge of his proficiency, and from whom, as he cannot fear contradiction, he cannot properly expect applause.

dicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and 263 all his eloquence to compliment.

generation from the writings of the past, and are Students often form their notions of the present very early informed of those changes which the gradual diffusion of knowledge, or the sudden caprice of fashion, produces in the world. Whatever might be the state of female literature in the last century, there is now no longer any danger at the tea-table; and whoever thinks it necessary lest the scholar should want an adequate audience to regulate his conversation by antiquated rules, will be rather despised for his futility than caressed for his politeness.

comprehension of those whom we address, is unTo talk intentionally in a manner above the questionable pedantry; but surely complaisance, requires, that no man should, without proof, conthe highest elevation of his fancy, or the utmost clude his company incapable of following him to extent of his knowledge. It is always safer to err in favour of others than of ourselves, and therefore we seldom hazard much by endeavouring to excel.

down resistance wherever they appear, are never attainable by him who, having spent his first years among the dust of libraries, enters late into the gay world with an unpliant attention and

when she quits her exaltation, to descend with It ought at least to be the care of learning, dignity. Nothing is more despicable than the airiness and jocularity of a man bred to severe sciTo this error the student is sometimes betrayed bly is a secret which schools cannot impart; that ence, and solitary meditation. To trifle agreeaby the natural recurrence of the mind to its com-gay negligence and vivacious levity, which charm mon employment, by the pleasure which every man receives from the recollection of pleasing images, and the desire of dwelling upon topics on which he knows himself able to speak with justness. But because we are seldom so far pre-established habits. judiced in favour of each other, as to search out for palliations, this failure of politeness is imputed always to vanity; and the harmless collegiate, who, perhaps, intended entertainment and instruction, or at worst only spoke without sufficient reflection upon the character of his hearers, is censured as arrogant or overbearing, and eager to extend his renown, in contempt of the convenience of society, and the laws of conver

sation.

All discourse of which others cannot partake, is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but, what never fails to excite very keen resentment, an insolent assertion of superiority, and a triumph over less enlightened understandings. The pedant is, therefore, not only heard with weariness, but malignity; and those who conceive themselves insulted by his knowledge, never fail to tell with acrimony how injudiciously it was exerted.

To avoid this dangerous imputation, scholars sometimes divest themselves with too much haste of their academical formality, and, in their endeavours to accommodate their notions and their style to common conceptions, talk rather of any thing than of that which they understand, and sink into insipidity of sentiment and meanness sider argument or criticism as perpetually interof expression.

There prevails among men of letters an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to women; and that therefore, whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational or important; must con

the mechanist, that, though forced by public em It is observed in the panegyric on Fabricius ployments into mingled conversation, he never lost the modesty and seriousness of the convent, nor drew ridicule upon himself by affected imitation of fashionable life. To the same praise every man devoted to learning ought to aspire. If he attempts the softer arts of pleasing, and endeavours to learn the grateful bow and the fageneral smile, he will lose the respect due to the miliar embrace, the insinuating accent and the character of learning, without arriving at the envied honour of doing nothing with elegance and facility.

tive of Athens, by so strict an adherence to the Theophrastus was discovered not to be a naAttic dialect, as showed that he had learned it not by custom, but by rule. A man not early formed to habitual elegance, betrays in like manner the effects of his education, by an unneces become pedantic by fear of pedantry, as to be sary anxiety of behaviour. It is as possible to troublesome by ill-timed civility. There is no kind of impertinence more justly censurable, than his who is always labouring to level thoughts to intellects higher than his own; who apologizes for every word which his own narrowness of converse inclines him to think unusual; keeps the exuberance of his faculties under visible reneedless explanations; and endeavours to shade straint; is solicitous to anticipate inquiries by his own abilities, lest weak eyes should be dazzled with their lustre.

MR. RAMBLER, THE laws of social benevolence require, that every man should endeavour to assist others by his experience. He that has at last escaped into port from the fluctuations of chance, and the gusts of opposition, ought to make some improvements in the chart of life, by marking the rocks on which he has been dashed, and the shallows where he has been stranded.

The error into which I was betrayed, when custom first gave me up to my own direction, is very frequently incident to the quick, the sprightly, the fearless, and the gay; to all whose ardour hurries them into precipitate execution of their designs, and imprudent declaration of their opinions; who seldom count the cost of pleasure, or examine the distant consequences of any practice that flatters them with immediate gratification.

betrayed by confidence, whatever lapse was suffered by neglect, all was drawn together for the diversion of my wild companions, who when they had been taught the art of ridicule, never failed to signalize themselves by a zealous imitation, and filled the town on the ensuing day with scandal and vexation, with merriment and shame.

I can scarcely believe, when I recollect my own practice, that I could have been so far de luded with petty praise, as to divulge the secrets of trust, and to expose the levities of frankness; to waylay the walks of the cautious, and surprise the security of the thoughtless. Yet it is certain, that for many years I heard nothing but with de sign to tell it, and saw nothing with any other curiosity than after some failure that might furnish out a jest.

My heart, indeed, acquits me of deliberate malignity, or interested insidiousness. I had no other purpose than to heighten the pleasure of laughter by communication, nor ever raised any pecuniary advantage from the calamities of others. I led weakness and negligence into dit ficulties, only that I might divert myself with their perplexities and distresses; and violated every law of friendship, with no other hope than that of gaining the reputation of smartness and

waggery.

I came forth into the crowded world with the I would not be understood to charge myself usual juvenile ambition, and desired nothing be- with any crimes of the atrocious or destructive yond the title of a wit. Money I considered as kind. I never betrayed an heir to gamesters, or below my care; for I saw such multitudes grow a girl to debauchees; never intercepted the kindrich without understanding, that I could not for-ness of a patron, or sported away the reputation bear to look on wealth as an acquisition easy to industry directed by genius, and therefore threw it aside as a secondary convenience, to be procured when my principal wish should be satisfied, and my claim to intellectual excellence universally acknowledged.

With this view I regulated my behaviour in public, and exercised my meditations in solitude. My life was divided between the care of providing topics for the entertainment of my company, and that of collecting company worthy to be entertained, for I soon found, that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are minds upon which the rays of fancy may be pointed without effect, and which no fire of sentiment can agitate or exalt.

of innocence. My delight was only in petty mischief and momentary vexations, and my acuteness was employed not upon fraud and` oppression, which it had been meritorious to detect, but upon harmless ignorance or absurdity, prejudice or mistake.

This inquiry I pursued with so much diligence and sagacity, that I was able to relate, of every man whom I knew, some blunder or miscarriage; to betray the most circumspect of my friends into follies, by a judicious flattery of his predominant passion; or expose him to contempt, by placing him in circumstances which put his prejudices into action, brought to view his natural defects, or drew the attention of the company on his airs of affectation.

The power had been possessed in vain if it had never been exerted; and it was not my custom to let any arts of jocularity remain unemIt was, however, not long, before I fitted my-ployed. My impatience of applause brought me self with a set of companions who knew how to laugh, and to whom no other recommendation was necessary than the power of striking out a jest. Among those I fixed my residence, and for a time enjoyed the felicity of disturbing the neighbours every night with the obstreperous applause which my sallies forced from the audience. The reputation of our club every day increased, and as my flights and remarks were circulated by my admirers, every day brought new solicitations for admission into our society.

To support this perpetual fund of merriment, I frequented every place of concourse, cultivated the acquaintance of all the fashionable race, and passed the day in a continual succession of visits, in which I collected a treasure of pleasantry for the expenses of the evening. Whatever error of conduct I could discover, whatever peculiarity of manner I could observe, whatever weakness was

always early to the place of entertainment; and I seldom failed to lay a scheme with the small knot that first gathered round me, by which some of those whom we expected might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to raise mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonitions of these particularities I secured our pleasantry. Our companion entered with his usual gayety, and began to partake of our noisy cheerfulness, when the conversation was imperceptibly di verted to a subject which pressed upon his tender part, and extorted the expected shrug, the customary exclamation, or the predicted remark. A general clamour of joy then burst from all

If those whom I had thus offended could have contented themselves with repaying one insult for another, and kept up the war only by a reciprocation of sarcasms, they might have perhaps vexed, but would never much have hurt me; for no man heartily hates him at whom he can laugh. But these wounds which they give me as they fly, are without cure; this alarm which they spread by their solicitude to escape me, excludes me from all friendship and from all pleasure. I am condemned to pass a long interval of my life in solitude, as a man suspected of in- Every season brings a new flight of beauties fection is refused admission into cities; and must into the world, who have hitherto heard only of linger in obscurity, till my conduct shall con- their own charms, and imagine that the heart vince the world, that I may be approached with-feels no passion but that of love. They are seen out hazard. I am, &c.

He surely is a useful monitor, who inculcates to these thoughtless strangers, that the majority are wicked; who informs them, that the train which wealth and beauty draw after them is lured only by the scent of prey; and that, perhaps, among all those who crowd about them with professions and flatteries, there is not one Yet Thebes more gates could show, more mouths the Nile. who does not hope for some opportunity to devour or betray them, to glut himself by their NONE of the axioms of wisdom which recom-destruction, or to share their spoils with a mend the ancient sages to veneration, seems to stronger savage. have required less extent of knowledge or perspicacity of penetration, than the remark of Bias, that of xéoves kakot, the majority are wicked.

that a good man wonders how any can be bad; | every injury with unwearied and perpetual reand they who are ignorant of the force of passion sentment; with him whose vanity inclines him and interest, who never observed the arts of to consider every man as a rival in every pretenseduction, the contagion of example, the gradual sion; with him whose airy negligence puts his descent from one crime to another, or the insen-friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and sible depravation of the principles by loose conversation, naturally expect to find integrity in every bosom, and veracity on every tongue.

who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties of friendship, and who adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden impulse of caprice.

It is, indeed, impossible not to hear from those who have lived longer, of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the Thus numerous are the dangers to which the heady, and the confident, as nothing more than converse of mankind exposes us, and which can the murmurs of peevishness, or the dreams of be avoided only by prudent distrust. He theredotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents fore that, remembering this salutary maxim learns of hoary wisdom, we commonly plunge into the early to withhold his fondness from fair appearworld fearless and credulous without any fore-ances, will have reason to pay some honours to sight of danger, or apprehension of deceit. Bias of Priene, who enabled him to become wise without the cost of experience.

I have remarked, in a former paper, that credulity is the common failing of unexperienced virtue; and that he who is spontaneously suspicious, may be justly charged with radical corruption; for, if he has not known the prevalence No. 176.] of dishonesty by information, nor had time to observe it with his own eyes, whence can he take his measures of judgment but from himself?

They who best deserve to escape the snares of artifice, are most likely to be entangled. He that endeavours to live for the good of others, must always be exposed to the arts of them who live only for themselves, unless he is taught by timely precepts the caution required in common transactions, and shown at a distance the pitfalls of treachery.

HOR.

SATURDAY, Nov. 23, 1751 -Naso suspendere adunco. On me you turn the nose. THERE are many vexatious accidents and uneasy situations which raise little compassion for the sufferer, and which no man but those whom they immediately distress can regard with seriousness. Petty mischiefs, that have no influence on futurity, nor extend their effects to the rest of life, are always seen with a kind of malicious To youth, therefore, it should be carefully in-pleasure. A mistake or embarrassment, which culcated, that, to enter the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation of general fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind will be prosperous, and that every coast will afford a harbour.

for the present moment fills the face with blushes, and the mind with confusion, will have no other effect upon those who observe it, than that of convulsing them with irresistible laughter. Some circumstances of misery are so powerfully ridiculous, that neither kindness nor duty can withstand them; they bear down love, interest, and reverence, and force the friend, the dependent, or the child, to give way to instantaneous motions of merriment.

Among the principal of comic calamities may be reckoned the pain which an author, not yet hardened into insensibility, feels at the onset of a furious critic, whose age, rank, or fortune, gives him confidence to speak without reserve; who heaps one objection upon another, and obtrudes his remarks, and enforces his corrections, without tenderness or awe.

To enumerate the various motives to deceit and injury, would be to count all the desires that prevail among the sons of men; since there is no ambition however petty, no wish however absurd, that by indulgence will not be enabled to overpower the influence of virtue. Many there are, who openly and almost professedly regulate all their conduct by their love of money; who have no other reason for action or forbearance, for compliance or refusal, than that they hope to gain more by one than by the other. These are indeed the meanest and cruellest of human beings, a race with whom, as with some pestiferous animals, the whole creation seems to be at war; but who, however detested or scorned, long continue to add heap to heap, and, when they have reduced one to beggary, are still per-umphing in every discovery of failure, and zeal mitted to fasten on another.

The author, full of the importance of his work, and anxious for the justification of every sylla ble, starts and kindles at the slightest attack, the critic, eager to establish his superiority, tri

ous to impress the cogency of his arguments Others, yet less rationally wicked, pass their pursues him from line to line without cessation lives in mischief, because they cannot bear the or remorse. The critic, who hazards little, prosight of success, and mark out every man for ceeds with vehemence, impetuosity, and fearlesshatred, whose fame or fortune they believe in-ness; the author, whose quiet and fame, and creasing. life and immortality, are involved in the controMany, who have not advanced to these de-versy, tries every art of subterfuge and defence; grees of guilt, are yet wholly unqualified for friendship, and unable to maintain any constant or regular course of kindness. Happiness may be destroyed not only by union with the man who is apparently the slave of interest, but with him whom a wild opinion of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause, disposes to pursue

maintains modestly what he resolves never to yield, and yields unwillingly what cannot be maintained. The critic's purpose is to conquer, the author only hopes to escape; the critic therefore knits his brow, and raises his voice, and rejoices whenever he perceives any tokens of pain excited by the pressure of his assertions, or the