to a gentleman's satisfaction, being a Quaker, would have subjected me to universal ridicule: I rose from my chair, took my hat from the peg, and abruptly quitted the room: next morning I sent to cut my name out of the club, but behold! they had saved me that ceremony over night, and I had once more a new set of acquaintance to go in search of.

In this solitary interim I strove to lighten the burthen of time by starting a correspondence with one of our public prints, and so long as I supplied it with anecdotes from the country, I may say without vanity there was neither fire nor flood, murder, rape nor robbery, wanting to embellish it: I broke two or three necks at a horse-race without any detriment to the community, and for the amusement of my readers drove over blind beggars, drowned drunken farmers, and tossed women with child by mad bullocks, without adding one item to the bills of mortality; I made matches without number which the register never recorded; I was at the same time a correspondent at Brussels, a resident in Spain, and a traveller at Constantinople, who gave secret information of all proceedings in those several places, and by the mysterious style in which I enveloped my dispatches, nobody could fix a falsehood on my intelligence, till I imprudently fought a battle on the banks of the Danube, after the armies were gone into winter quarters, which did the Turk no mischief, and effectually blasted me with the compiler, and him with the public.

I am now out of business, and, if you want any thing in my way to enliven your Observers, (which give me leave to remark are sometimes rather of the dullest) I shall be proud to serve you, being

Your very humble servant,

at command,

KIT CRACKER.

N. B. I do not want any thing in Kit Cracker's way; but though I decline the offer of his assistance, I willingly avail myself of the moral of his example.

NUMBER XCIV.

Λυπᾶντα τὸν πλησιόν, εἰ ράδιον αυτὸν ἀλυπον εἶναι.

DEMOPHILI SENTENTIA.

He, who another's peace annoys,
By the same act his own destroys.

TO THE OBSERVER.

As I have lived long enough to repent of a fatal propensity, that has led me to commit many offences, not the less irksome to my present feelings for the secrecy with which I contrived to execute them, and as these can now be no otherwise atoned for than by a frank confession, I have resolved upon this mode of addressing myself to you. Few people chuse to display their own characters to the world in such colours as I shall give to mine, but as I have mangled so many reputations in my time without mercy, I should be the meanest of mankind if I spared my own; and being now about to speak of a person whom no man loves, I may give vent to an acrimony at which no man can take offence. If I have been troublesome to others, I am no less uncomfortable to myself, and amidst vexations without number, the greatest of all is, that there is not one which does not originate from myself.

I entered upon life with many advantages natural and acquired; I am indebted to my parents for a li

beral education, and to nature for no contemptible share of talents: my propensities were not such as betrayed me into dissipation and extravagance: my mind was habitually of a studious cast; I had a passion for books, and began to collect them at an early period of my life: to them I devoted the greatest portion of my time, and had my vanity been of a sort to be contented with the literary credit I had now acquired, I had been happy; but I was ambitious of convincing the world, I was not the idle owner of weapons which I did not know the use of; I seized every safe opportunity of making my pretensions respected by such dabblers in the belles lettres who paid court to me, and as I was ever cautious of stepping an inch beyond my tether on these occasions, I soon found myself credited for more learning than my real stock amounted to. I received all visitors in my library, affected a studious air, and took care to furnish my table with volumes of a select sort: upon these I was prepared to descant, if by chance a curious friend took up any one of them, and as there is little fame to be got by treading in the beaten track of popular opinion, I sometimes took the liberty to be eccentric and paradoxical in my criticisms and cavils, which gained me great respect from the ignorant, (for upon such only I took care to practise this chicanery) so that in a short time I became a sovereign dictator within a certain set, who looked up to me for second-hand opinions in all matters of literary taste, and saw myself inaugurated by my flatterers censor of all new publications.

My trumpeters had now made such a noise in the world, that I began to be in great request, and men of real literature laid out for my acquaintance; but here I acted with a coldness, that was in me constitutional as well as prudential: I was resolved not to

risk my laurels, and throw away the fruits of a triumph so cheaply purchased: solicitations, that would have flattered others, only alarmed me; such was not the society I delighted in; against such attacks I entrenched myself with the most jealous caution if however by accident I was drawn out of my fastnesses, and trapped unawares into an ambuscade of wicked wits, I armed myself to meet them with a triple tier of smiles; I primed my lips with such a ready charge of flattery, that when I had once engaged them in the pleasing contemplation of their own merits, they were seldom disposed to scrutinize into mine, and thus in general I contrived to escape undetected. Though it was no easy matter to extort an opinion from me in such companies, yet sometimes I was unavoidably entangled in conversation, and then I was forced to have recourse to all my address; happily my features were habituated to a smile of the most convertible sort, for it would answer the purposes of affected humility as well as those of actual contempt, to which in truth it was more congenial: my opinion, therefore, upon any point of controversy flattered both parties and befriended neither; it was calculated to impress the company with an idea that I knew much more than I professed to know; it was in short so insinuating, so submitted, so hesitating, that a man must have had the heart of Nero to have prosecuted a being so absolutely inoffensive: but these sacrifices cost me dear, for they were foreign to my nature, and, as I hated my superiors, I avoided their society.

Having sufficiently distinguished myself as a critic, I now began to meditate some secret attempts as an author; but in these the same caution attended me, and my performances did not rise above a little sonnet, or a parody, which I circulated through a few hands without a name, prepared to disavow it, if it

was not applauded to my wishes: I also wrote occasional essays and paragraphs for the public prints, by way of trying my talents in various kinds of style; by these experiments I acquired a certain facility of imitating other people's manner and disguising my own, and so far my point was gained; but as for the secret satisfaction I half promised myself in hearing my productions applauded, of that I was altogether disappointed; for though I tried both praise and dispraise for the purpose of bringing them into notice, I never had the pleasure to be contradicted by any man in the latter case, or seconded by a living soul in the former: I had circulated a little poem, which cost me some pains, and as I had been flattered with the applause it gained from several of its readers, I put it one evening in my pocket, and went to the house of a certain person, who was much resorted to by men of genius: an opportunity luckily offered for producing my manuscript, which I was prepared to avow as soon as the company present had given sentence in its favour: it was put into the hands of a dramatic author of some celebrity, who read it aloud, and in a manner as I thought that clearly anticipated his disgust: as soon, therefore, as he had finished it, and demanded of me if I knew the author, I had no hesitation to declare that I did not. Then, I presume, rejoined he, it is no offence to say I think it the merest trash I ever read None in life, I replied, and from that moment held him in everlasting hatred.

Disgusted with the world, I now began to dip my pen in gall, and as soon as I had singled out a proper object for my spleen, I looked round him for his weak side, where I could place a blow to best effect, and wound him undiscovered: the author abovementioned had a full share of my attention; he was an irritable man, and I have seen him