You will, perhaps, think there is something enigmatical in all this; and lest you should not yet be able to discover my true character sufficiently to engage you in my interest, I will give you a short history of the incidents that have happened to me during the last eight hours. It is now four o'clock in the afternoon: about seven I rose; soon after, as I was walking by the dial in Covent-Garden, I was perceived by a man well dressed, who appeared to have been sleeping under one of the sheds, and whom a watchman had just told that I was approaching. After attempting to swear several oaths, and staggering a few paces, he scowled at me under his hat, and insulted me indirectly, by telling the watchman as well as he could, that he had sat in company with my sister till he became too drunk to find his way home, which nevertheless he had attempted; and that he hated the sight of me as he hated the devil. He then desired that a coach or a chair might be immediately called to carry him from my presence. About nine I visited a young lady who could not see me, because she was but just returned from a rout. I went next to a student in the Temple, who received me with great joy; but told me, that he was going to dine with a gentleman, whose daughter he had long courted, and who at length, by the interposition of friends, had been persuaded to consent to the match, though several others had offered a larger settlement. From this interview I had no desire to detain him; and about twelve I found a young prodigal, to whom I had afforded many opportunities of felicity, which he neglected to improve; and whom I had scarce ever left without having convinced him, that he was wasting life in the search of pleasure which he could never find. looked upon me with a countenance full of suspicion, dread, and perplexity, and seemed to wish that I had delayed my visit, or been excluded by his servant, imagining, as I have since heard, that a bailiff was behind He me. After dinner, I again met my friend the student; but he who had so lately received me with ecstacy, now leered at me with a sullen discontent; and if it had been in his power, would have destroyed me, for no other reason than because the old gentleman, whom he had visited, had changed his mind. You may, perhaps, be told, that I am myself inconstant and capricious; that I am never the same person eight-and-forty hours together, and that no man knows whether at my next visit I shall bring him good or evil: but indentity of person might with equal truth be denied the Adventurer, and of every other being upon earth; for all animal bodies are in a state of perpetual decay and renovation. So ridiculous a slander does not indeed deserve a serious reply: and I believe you are now ready to answer every other cavil of my enemies, by convincing the world that it is their own fault if I do not always leave them wiser and better than I found them; and whoever has, through life, continued to become gradually wiser and better, has obtained a source of divine felicity, a well of living water, which, like the widow's oil, shall encrease as it is poured out, and which, though it was supplied by time, eternity shall not exhaust. I hope, Sir, your paper will be a means of procuring me better treatment; and that you will yourself be solicitous to secure the friendship of Your humble servant, TO-DAY. No. XII. SATURDAY, DEC. 16. Magnum pauperies opprobrium jubet HOR. He whom the dread of want ensnares, TO THE ADVENTURER. SIR, OF all the expedients that have been found out to alleviate the miseries of life, none is left to despair but complaint; and though complaint, without hope of relief, may be thought rather to encrease than mitigate anguish, as it recollects every circumstance of distress, and embitters the memory of past sufferings by the anticipation of future, yet, like weeping, it is an indulgence of that which it is pain to suppress, and sooths with the hope of pity, the wretch who despairs of comfort. Of this number is he who now addresses you : yet the solace of complaint, and the hope of pity, are not the only motives that have induced me to communicate the series of events, by which I have been led on in an insensible deviation from felicity, and at last plunged in irremediable calamity. I wish that others may escape perdition; and am, therefore, solicitous to warn them of the path that leads to the precipice from which I have fallen. I am the only child of a wealthy farmer who, as he was himself illiterate, was the more zealous to make his son a scholar; imagining that there was in the knowledge of Greek and Latin, some secret charm of perpetual influence, which as I passed through life would smooth the way before me, establish the happiness of success, and supply new resources to disappointment. But not being able to deny himself the pleasure he found in having me about him, instead of sending me out to a boarding-school, he offered the curate of the parish ten pounds a year and his board to become my tutor. This gentleman, who was in years, and had lately buried his wife, accepted the employment, but refused the salary. The work of education, he said, would agreeably fill his intervals of leisure, and happily coincide with the duties of his function: but he observed that his curacy, which was thirty pounds a year, and had long subsisted him when he had a family, would make him wealthy now he was a single man: and therefore he insisted to pay for his board. To this my father, with whatever reluctance, was obliged to consent. At the age of six years I began to read my Accidence under my preceptor, and at fifteen had gone through the Latin and Greek classics. But the languages were not all that I learned of this gentleman; besides other science of less importance, he taught me the theory of Christianity by the precepts, and the prac tice by his example. As his temper was calm and steady, the influence which he had acquired over me was unlimited: he was never capriciously severe, so that I regarded his displeasure not as an effect of his infirmity, but of my own fault: he discovered so much affection in the pleasure with which he commended, and in the tender concern with which he reproved me, that I loved him as a father; and his devotion, though rational and manly, was yet so habitual and fervent, that I reverenced him as a saint. I found even my passions controuled by an awe which his presence impressed; and by a constant attention to his doctrine and his life, I acquired such a sense of my connexion with the invisible world, and such a conviction of the consciousness of Deity to all my thoughts, that every inordinate wish was secretly suppressed, and my conduct regulated by the most scrupulous circumspection. My father thought he had now taken sufficient care of my education, and therefore began to expect that I should assist in overlooking his servants, and managing his farm, in which he intended I should succeed him: but my preceptor, whose principal view was not my temporal advantage, told him, that as a farmer, great part of my learning would be totally useless; and that the only way to make me serviceable to mankind, in proportion to the knowledge I had acquired, would be to send me to the university, that at a proper time I might take orders. But my father, besides that he was still unwilling to part with me, had probably many reasons against my entering the world in a cassock. Such, however, was the deference which he paid to my tutor, that he had almost implicitly submitted to his determination, when a relation of my mother's, who was an attorney of great practice in the Temple, came to spend part of the long vacation at our house, in consequence of invitations which had been often repeated during an absence of many years. My father thought that an opportunity of consulting how to dispose of me, with a man so well acquainted with life, was not to be lost; and perhaps he secretly hoped that my preceptor would give up his opinion as indefensible, if a person of the lawyer's experience should declare against it. My cousin was accordingly made umpire in the debate; and after he had heard the arguments on both sides, he declared against my becoming a farmer: he said, it would be an act of injustice to bury my parts and learning in the obscurity of rural life; because, if produced to the world, they would probably be rewarded with wealth and distinction. My preceptor imagined the question was now finally determined in his favour; and being obliged to visit one of his parishioners that was sick, he gave me |