His hospitality was uncommonly extensive; but his neighbours partook of it rather as a duty than a pleasure. And though at table he said more witty and more lively things than all his guests put together, yet everybody remarked how dull the dinner had been.

At his house I found Eudocius, who flew to embrace me, and to tell me his history since we parted. He told it rather more in detail than was necessary; but I thanked him for his minuteness, because it had the air of believing me interested in the tale. Eudocius was now almost as rich as Clitander; but his fortune was of his own acquisition. In the line of commerce, to which he had been bred, he had been highly successful. Industry, the most untainted uprightness, and that sort of claim which a happy disposition had upon every good man he met, had procured him such advantages, that in a few years he found himself possessed of wealth beyond his most sanguine expectations, and, as he modestly said, much beyond his merits; but he did himself injustice; he had all the merit which enjoying it thankfully, and using it well, could give. At his house, to which I afterwards attended him, most things were good, and Eudocius honestly praised them all. He had a group of his neighbours assembled, all of whom were happy; but those who came from visiting Clitander were always the happiest. In his garden and grounds there were some beauties which Eudocius showed you with much satisfaction; there were many deformities which he did not observe himself; if any other remarked them, he was happy they were discovered, and took a memorandum for mending them next year. His tenants and cottagers were contented and comfortable, or at least in situations that ought to make them so. If any of them came with complaints to Eudocius, he

referred them to his steward, but with injunctions to treat them indulgently; and when the steward sometimes told him he had been imposed on, he said he would not trust the man again; but repeated a favourite phrase of his, which he had learnt from somebody, but adopted from pure good-nature," that he might be cheated of his money, but should not of his temper." In this, as in every thing else, it was not easy to vex him, while, on the other hand, he was made happy at very little expense; he laughed at dull jokes, was pleased with bad pictures, praised dull books, and patronized very inferior artists - not always from an absolute ignorance in these things, though his taste, it must be owned, was none of the most acute, but because it was his way to be pleased, and that he liked to see people pleased around him.

It was not so with Clitander. Wanting that enthusiasm, that happy deception, which leads warmer, and indeed inferior minds, through life, he examined with too critical, perhaps too just an eye, its pleasures, its ambition, its love, its friendship, and found them empty and unsatisfying. Eudocius was the happy spectator of an indifferently played comedy; but Clitander had got behind the scenes, and saw the actors with all their wants and imperfections. Clitander, however, never shows the sourness or the melancholy of a misanthrope. He is not interested enough in mankind to be angry, nor is the world worth his being sad for. Thus he not only wants the actual pleasures of life, but even that sort of enjoyment which results from its sorrows.

Miserum te judico, quòd nunquam fueris miser.

SENECA.

The only satisfaction he seems to feel, is that sort of detection which his ability enables him to make of

the emptiness of the world's pleasures, the hypocrisy of its affected virtues, the false estimation of its knowledge, the ridiculousness of its pretended importance. Hence he is often a man of humour and of wit, and plays with both, with the appearance of gayety and mirth. But this gayety is not happiness. Such a detection may clothe one's face in smiles, but it cannot make glad the heart. In the gayety of Clitander, however excited, there is little enjoyment. Clitander undervalues his audience, and never delivers himself up to them with that happy cheerfulness with which Eudocius tells his old stories, and every one laughs without knowing why.

In the apathy of a dull man, nobody is interested, and we consign him to its influence without reflection and without regret. But when one considers how much is lost to the world by the indifference of Clitander, one cannot help lamenting that unfortunate perversion of talents, by which they are not only deprived of their value, but made instruments of ill fortune; which, if I may be allowed the expression, disappoints the bounty of Heaven, both to its possessor himself, and to those around him, whom it ought to have enriched.

V

No. 35. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1785.

AMONG the apologies for irregularity and dissipation, none are of more pernicious tendency than those which are drawn from the good qualities with

which that irregularity and dissipation are supposed to be generally accompanied. The warmth and openness of noble minds, it is said, are apt to lead them into extravagances which the cold and the unfeeling can easily criticize, and may plausibly condemn. But in the same minds reside the virtues of magnanimity, disinterestedness, benevolence, and friendship, in a degree to which the tame and the selfish, who boast of the prudence and propriety of their conduct can never aspire. The first resemble a luxuriant tree, which, amidst its wild and wandering shoots, is yet productive of the richest fruit; the others, like a dry and barren stock, put forth a few regular but stunted branches, which require no pruning, indeed, but from which no profit is to be reaped.

It might be worth while to inquire into the justice of this account, to the truth of which the young and the gay are apt implicitly to assent; but the young and the gay have too much vivacity to reason, and as little inclination as leisure for inquiry; yet some of them who knew Flavillus, may listen for a moment while I tell them his history. 'Tis the last time they will be troubled with his name, or his misfortunes!

He was the heir of an estate which was once reckoned very considerable. It descended to him burdened with a good deal of debt, and with a variety of incumbrances; but still Flavillus was held to have succeeded to a great possession, his nominal rent-roll being a large one. At an early period of life, he entered into the army; but he soon quitted a profession where, in point of wealth, the prospects were not alluring; and where, in point of station he had not patience to wait for the usual steps of advancement. Flavillus, both while he was

in the army, and after he quitted it, was accounted one of the most agreeable and most accomplished men that was anywhere to be met with. Nor was this reputation undeserved. Having had a complete university education, he had all the learning of a philosopher, without any of that pedantry which often attends it; and having mixed a good deal in the world, he had all the ease of a man of fashion, without any of that flippancy which mere men of fashion are apt to acquire. Flavillus, from those qualities, became the darling of society. His company was universally courted; and it was considered as a high recommendation to any party of pleasure, that he was to be one of the number. Possessed of an indolence which unfitted him for business, having quitted the army, the only profession he ever had the least inclination to cultivate, and too negligent to think of retrieving the incumbrances on his estate by economy and schemes of prudence, he gave himself completely up to the pleasures of society, and allowed himself to be captivated by the popularity which his manners secured him, and by the general good-will with which he was constantly received.

It is easy to conjecture the effects of such a course of life on the circumstances of Flavillus. The debts and incumbrances on his estate were allowed to remain, and the expense he was led into added much to their amount. At first, Flavillus felt a good deal of uneasiness on this ground; he made some feeble efforts to retrench his expense, and to mix less in expensive society; to dress more plainly, to give up public places, to go no more to taverns, to lose no more money at play. But these better resolutions sunk under his love of pleasure, and his temptations to habitual indulgence. He became at length afraid to think of his circumstances; and the very