visible. The man who does not know how to methodize his thoughts, has always to borrow a phrase from the Dispensary, "a barren superfluity of words;" the fruit is lost amidst the exuberance of leaves.

Tom Puzzle is one of the most eminent immethodical disputants of any that has fallen under my observation. Tom has read enough to make him very impertinent; his knowledge is sufficient to raise doubts, but not to clear them. It is a pity that he has so much learning, or that he has not a great deal more. With these qualifications Tom sets up for a free-thinker, finds a great many things to blame in the constitution of his country, and gives shrewd intimations that he does not believe in another world. In short, Puzzle is an atheist as much as his parts will give him leave. He has got about half a dozen commonplace topics, into which he never fails to turn the conversation, whatever was the occasion of it. Though the matter in debate be about Douay or Denain, it is ten to one but half his discourse runs upon the unreasonableness of bigotry and priestcraft. This makes Mr. Puzzle the admiration of all those who have less sense than himself, and the contempt of all those who have more. There is none in town whom Tom dreads so much as my friend Will Dry. Will, who is acquainted with Tom's logic, when he finds him running off the question, cuts him short with a "What then? We allow all this to be true; but what is it to our present purpose?" I have known Tom eloquent half an hour together, and tri umphing, as he thought, in the superiority of the

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argument, when he has been nonplussed on a sudden by Mr. Dry's desiring him to tell the company what it was that he endeavored to prove. In short, Dry is a man of a clear methodical head, but few words, and gains the same advantage over Puzzle that a small body of regular troops would gain over a numberless undisciplined militia.

WAYS OF GIVING ADVICE.

Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo.

HOR. ARS POET. 343.

Mixing together profit and delight.

THERE is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. We look upon the man who gives it us as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one shows for our good on such an occasion as a piece of presumption or impertinence. The truth of it is, the person who pretends to advise, does, in that particular, exercise a superiority over us, and can have no other reason for it, but that, in comparing us with himself, he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding. For these reasons, there is nothing so difficult as the art of making advice agreeable; and indeed all the writers, both ancient and modern, have distinguished

themselves among one another, according to the perfection at which they have arrived in this art. How many devices have been made use of to render this bitter portion palatable! Some convey their instructions to us in the best chosen words, others in the most harmonious numbers; some in points of wit, and others in short proverbs.

But, among all the different ways of giving counsel, I think the finest, and that which pleases the most universally, is fable, in whatsoever shape it appears. If we consider this way of instructing or giving advice, it excels all others, because it is the least shocking, and the least subject to those exceptions which I have before mentioned.

This will appear to us, if we reflect, in the first place, that upon the reading of a fable we are made. to believe we advise ourselves. We peruse the author for the sake of the story, and consider the precepts rather as our own conclusions than his instructions. The moral insinuates itself imperceptibly; we are taught by surprise, and become wiser and better unawares. In short, by this method, a man is so far overreached as to think he is directing himself, whilst he is following the dictates of another, and consequently is not sensible of that which is the most unpleasing circumstance in advice.

In the next place, if we look into human nature, we shall find that the mind is never so much pleased as when she exerts herself in any action that gives her an idea of her own perfections and abilities. This natural pride and ambition of the soul is very

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much gratified in the reading of a fable; for, writings of this kind, the reader comes in for half of the performance; everything appears to him like a discovery of his own; he is busied all the while in applying characters and circumstances, and is in this respect both a reader and a composer. It is no wonder, therefore, that on such occasions, when the mind is thus pleased with itself, and amused with its own discoveries, it is highly delighted with the writing which is the occasion of it. For this reason the "Absalom and Achitophel "* was one of the most popular poems that ever appeared in English. The poetry is indeed very fine; but had it been much finer, it would not have so much pleased, without a plan which gave the reader an opportunity of exerting his own talents.

This oblique manner of giving advice is so inoffensive, that if we look into ancient histories, we find the wise men of old very often chose to give counsel to their kings in fables. To omit many which will occur to every one's memory, there is a pretty instance of this nature in a Turkish tale, which I do not like the worse for that little Oriental extravagance which is mixed with it.

We are told that the Sultan Mahmoud, by his perpetual wars abroad and his tyranny at home, had

* A memorable satire, written by Dryden against the faction which, by Lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the Duke of Monmouth at their head. Of this poem, in which personal satire is applied to the support of public principles, the sale was so large that it is said not to have been equalled, but by Sacheverell's trial.

filled his dominions with ruin and desolation, and half unpeopled the Persian empire. The vizier to this great Sultan, whether a humorist or an enthusiast, we are not informed, pretended to have learned of a certain dervise to understand the language of birds, so that there was not a bird that could open his mouth but the vizier knew what it was he said. As he was one evening with the Sultan, in their return from hunting, they saw a couple of owls near a tree that grew near an old wall out of a heap of rubbish. "I would fain know," says the Sultan," what those two owls are saying to one another; listen to their discourse, and give me an account of it." The vizier approached the tree, pretending to be very attentive to the two owls. Upon his return to the Sultan, "Sir," says he, "I have heard part of their conversation, but dare not tell you what it is." The Sultan would not be satisfied with such an answer, but forced him to repeat word for word everything the owls had said. "You must know, then," said the vizier, " that one of these owls has a son, and the other a daughter, between whom they are now upon a treaty of marriage. The father of the son said to the father of the daughter in my hearing, 'Brother, I consent to this marriage, provided you will settle upon your daughter fifty ruined villages for her portion.' To which the father of the daughter replied, Instead of fifty, I will give her five hundred, if you please. God grant a long life to Sultan Mahmoud! Whilst he reigns over us, we shall never want ruined villages.'"