park, and, if I was going the same way, would take me in his chariot. I had no inclination to any other favours, and therefore left him without any intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding. I am, &c. Asper. Though I am not wholly insensible of the provocations which my correspondent has received, I cannot altogether commend the keenness of his resentment, nor encourage him to persist in his resolution of breaking off all commerce with his old acquaintance. One of the golden precepts of Pythagoras directs, that a friend should not be hated for little faults; and surely he, upon whom nothing worse can be charged, than that he mats his stairs, and covers his carpet, and sets out his finery to show before those whom he does not admit to use it, has yet committed nothing that should exclude him from common degrees of kindness. Such improprieties often proceed rather from stupidity than malice. Those who thus shine only to dazzle, are influenced merely by custom and example, and neither examine, nor are qualified to examine, the motives of their own practice, or to state the nice limits between elegance and ostentation. They are often innocent of the pain which their vanity produces, and insult others when they have no worse purpose than to please themselves. He that too much refines his delicacy will always endanger his quiet. Of those with whom nature and virtue oblige us to converse, some are ignorant of the art of pleasing, and offend when they design to caress; some are negligent, and gratify themselves without regard to the quiet of another; some, perhaps, are malicious, and feel no greater satisfaction in prosperity, than that of raising envy and trampling inferiority. But whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it, for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. No. 202. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, Πρὸς ἅπαντα δειλὸς ἐστὶν ὁ πένης πράγματα Απαντα τ' ἀνιαρά, Δαμπρία, φέρει.-CALLIMACHUS. From no affliction is the poor exempt, He thinks each eye surveys him with contempt, Cankers each wound, and sharpens ev'ry dart. A -F. LEWIS. MONG those who have endeavoured to promote learning, and rectify judgment, it has been long customary to complain of the abuse of words which are often admitted to signify things so different, that, instead of assisting the understanding as vehicles of knowledge, they produce error, dissension, and perplexity, because what is affirmed in one sense, is received in another. If this ambiguity sometimes embarrasses the most solemn controversies, and obscures the demonstrations of science, it may be well expected to infest the pompous periods of declaimers, whose purpose is often only to amuse with fallacies, and change the colours of truth and falsehood; or the musical compositions of poets, whose style is professedly figurative, and whose art is imagined to consist in distorting words from their original meaning. There are few words of which the reader believes himself better to know the import, than of poverty; yet, whoever studies either the poets or philosophers, will find such an account of the condition expressed by that term as his experience or observation will not easily discover to be true. Instead of the meanness, distress, complaint, anxiety, and dependence, which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of poverty, he will read of content, innocence, and cheerfulness, of health and safety, tranquillity and freedom; of pleasures not known but to men unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that sheds his balsamic anodynes only on the cottage. Such are the blessings to be obtained by the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from their thrones, and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber undisturbed in the elysium of poverty.1 1 "Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs -Henry IV. Second Part, Act iii. sc. i., 1. 9. If these authors do not deceive us, nothing can be more absurd than that perpetual contest for wealth which keeps the world in commotion; nor any complaints more justly censured than those which proceed from want of the gifts of fortune, which we are taught by the great masters of moral wisdom to consider as golden shackles, by which the wearer is at once disabled and adorned; as luscious poisons which may for a time please the palate, but soon betray their malignity by languor and by pain. It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.1 But it will be found upon a nearer view, that they who extol the happiness of poverty, do not mean the same state with those who deplore its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of empires, or to contrive forms of lamentations for monarchs in distress, rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty, who make no approaches to the dignity of 1 Boswell describes how he and Johnson entered a hut in the Island of Col:-"There was but one bed for all the family, and the hut was very smoky. When he came out he said to me, 'Et hoc secundum sententiam philosophorum est esse beatus.' BOSWELL. 'The philosophers, when they placed happiness in a cottage, supposed cleanliness and no smoke.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, they did not think about either.'"-Boswell's Johnson, v. 293. crowns. To be poor, in the epic language, is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have fleets and armies in pay. Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate, easily gratifies his ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by boasting his contempt of riches, when he has already more than he enjoys. He who would show the extent of his views, and grandeur of his conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and magnificence, may talk like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the inconveniencies of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires to five hundred pounds a year1; a fortune, indeed, not exuberant, when we compare it with the expences of pride and luxury, but to which it little becomes a philosopher to affix the name of poverty, since no man can, with any propriety, be termed 1 "When you have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does there remain which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year?"-Cowley's Works, ed. 1674, last part, p. 123. In the beginning of the same essay he says: "If ever I more riches did desire Than cleanliness and quiet do require, If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat With any wish so mean as to be great, Continue, Heav'n, still from me to remove The humble blessings of that life I love." Johnson, in the last year of his life, said that if his pension were doubled, so that he should receive six hundred pounds a year, "he would have the consciousness that he should pass the remainder of his life in splendour."-Boswell's Johnson, iv. 337 |