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to fame and greatness; and reward all those who countenance his rise, or paid due regard to his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace and honour; contract his views to domestic pleasures; form the manners of children like himself; observe how every year expands the beauty of his daughters, and how his sons catch ardour from their father's history; he will give laws to the neighbourhood; dictate axioms to posterity; and leave the world an example of wisdom and of happiness.

With hopes like these, he sallies jocund into life; to little purpose is he told, that the condition of humanity admits no pure and unmingled happiness; that the exuberant gaiety of youth ends in poverty or disease; that uncommon qualifications and contrarities of excellence, produce envy equally with applause; that, whatever admiration and fondness may promise him, he must marry a wife like the wives of others, with some virtues and some faults, and be as often disgusted by her vices, as delighted by her elegance; that if he adventures into the circle of action, he must expect to encounter men as artful, as daring, as resolute as himself; that of his children, some may be deformed, and others vicious; some may disgrace him by their follies, some offend him by their insolence, and some exhaust him by their profusion. He hears all this with obstinate incredulity, and wonders by what malignity old age is influenced, that it cannot forbear to fill his ears with predictions of misery.

Among other pleasing errors of young minds, is

the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries can spare from their own affairs, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines every one that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy. He therefore considers his fame as involved in the event of every action. Many of the virtues and vices of youth proceed from this quick sense of reputation. This it is that gives firmness and constancy, fidelity and disinterestedness, and it is this that kindles resentment for slight injuries, and dictates all the principles of sanguinary honour.

But as time brings him forward into the world, he soon discovers that he only shares fame or reproach with innumerable partners; that he is left unmarked in the obscurity of the crowd; and that what he does, whether good or bad, soon gives way to new objects of regard. He then easily sets himself free from the anxieties of reputation, and considers praise or censure as a transient breach, which, while he hears it, is passing away, without any lasting mischief or advantage.

In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and, in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.

Such is the condition of life, that something is always wanting to happiness. In youth, we have warm hopes, which are soon blasted by rashness and negligence, and great designs, which are defeated by inexperience. In age, we have knowledge and prudence without spirit to exert, or motives

to prompt them; we are able to plan schemes, and regulate measures; but have not time remaining to bring them to completion.1

1 Boswell quotes from "a small duodecimo volume, in which Johnson has written a variety of hints on different subjects," the following sketch of this number of The Rambler:

"Youth's Entry, &c.

"Baxter's account of things in which he had changed his mind as he grew up. Voluminous.-No wonder.-If every man was to tell, or mark, on how many subjects he has changed, it would make vols. but the changes not always observed by man's self.-From pleasure to bus. [business] to quiet; from thoughtfulness to reflect. to piety; from dissipation to domestic. by impercept. gradat. but the change is certain. Dial non progredi, progress. esse conspicimus. Look back, consider what was thought at some dist. period.

"Hope predom. in youth. Mind not willingly indulges unpleasing thoughts. The world lies all enamelled before him, as a distant prospect sun-gilt ;-inequalities only found by coming to it. Love is to be all joy—children excellent— Fame to be constant-caresses of the great-applauses of the learned-smiles of Beauty.

"Fear of disgrace-bashfulness-Finds things of less importance. Miscarriages forgot like excellencies-if remembered, of no import. Danger of sinking into negligence of reputation. Lest the fear of disgrace destroy activity.

"Confidence in himself. Long tract of life before him.-No thought of sickness.-Embarrassment of affairs.-Distraction of family. Public calamities.-No sense of the prevalence of bad habits. Negligent of time-ready to undertakecareless to pursue-all changed by time.

"Confident of others-unsuspecting as unexperiencedimagining himself secure against neglect, never imagines they will venture to treat him ill. Ready to trust; expecting to be trusted. Convinced by time of the selfishness, the meanthe cowardice, the treachery of men.

ness,

"Youth ambitious, as thinking honours easy to be had. "Different kinds of praise pursued at different periods. Of the gay in youth.-dang. hurt, &c. despised.

No. 200. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15,

1752.

Nemo petit modicis quæ mittebantur amicis
A Seneca, quæ Piso bonus, quæ Cotta solebat
Largiri, namque et titulis et fascibus olim
Major habebatur donandi gloria; solum
Poscimus ut cænes civiliter. Hoc face, et esto
Esto, ut nunc multi, dives tibi, pauper amicis.—Juv.1

No man expects (for who so much a sot
Who has the times he lives in so forgot?)
What Seneca, what Piso us'd to send,
To raise or to support a sinking friend.
Those godlike men, to wanting virtue kind,
Bounty well plac'd, preferr'd, and well design'd,

To all their titles, all that height of pow'r,

Which turns the brains of fools, and fools alone adore.

When your poor client is condemn'd t' attend,

"Tis all we ask, receive him as a friend :

Descend to this, and then we ask no more;
Rich to yourself, to all beside be poor.-BOWLES.

"Of the fancy in manhood. Ambit.-stocks-bargains.Of the wise and sober in old age-seriousness-formality -maxims, but general-only of the rich, otherwise age is happy-but at last everything referred to riches-no having fame, honour, influence, without subjection to caprice.

Horace [The motto is from Horace].

"Hard it would be if men entered life with the same views with which they leave it, or left as they enter it.-No hope --no undertaking-no regard to benevolence-no fear of disgrace, &c.

"Youth to be taught the piety of age-age to retain the honour of youth."-Boswell's Johnson, i. 205.

1 Juvenal, Satires, v. 108.

To the RAMBLER.

MR. RAMBLER,

UCH is the tenderness or infirmity of many minds, that when any affliction oppresses them, they have immediate

recourse to lamentation and complaint, which, though it can only be allowed reasonable when evils admit of remedy, and then only when addressed to those from whom the remedy is expected, yet seems even in hopeless and incurable distresses to be natural, since those by whom it is not indulged, imagine that they give a proof of extraordinary fortitude by suppressing it.

I am one of those who, with the Sancho of Cervantes, leave to higher characters the merit of suffering in silence, and give vent without scruple to any sorrow that swells in my heart1 It is therefore to me a severe aggravation of a calamity, when it is such as in the common opinion will not justify the acerbity of exclamation, or support the

1"'Pray, sir,' said Sancho, 'sit a little more upright in your saddle; for you seem to me to ride sideling, occasioned doubtless by your being so sorely bruised.' 'It is certainly so,' answered Don Quixote, and if I do not complain, it is because Knights-errant are not allowed to complain of any wound whatever, even though their entrails should come out of the body.' 'If that be the case, I have nothing to reply,' answered Sancho; 'but God knows I should be glad to hear your worship complain when anything ails you. As for myself, I shall be apt to complain of the least pain I feel, unless this business of not complaining be understood to extend to the squires as well as the knights."-Don Quixote, bk i., ch. viii.

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