vithout disorder, rather than that it should be | No. 46.] SATURDAY, June 25, 1750. The same reflection arises in my mind, upon observation of the manner in which marriage is frequently contracted. When I see the avaricious and crafty taking companions to their tables and their beds without any inquiry, but after farms and money; or the giddy and thoughtless uniting themselves for life to those whom they have only seen by the light of tapers at a ball; when parents make articles for their children, without inquiring after their consent; when some marry for heirs to disappoint their brothers, and others throw themselves into the arms of those whom they do not love, because they have found themselves rejected where they were more solicitous to please; when some marry because their servants cheat them, some because they squander their own money, some because their houses are pestered with company, some because they will live like other people, and some only because they are sick of themselves, I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so great, that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly overbalance them. - Genus, et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco Nought from my birth or ancestors I claim; SIR, TO THE RAMBLER. OVID SINCE I find that you have paid so much regarc to my complaints as to publish them, I am inclined by vanity, or gratitude, to continue our cor respondence; and, indeed, without either of these motives, am glad of an opportunity to write, for I am not accustomed to keep in any thing that swells my heart, and have here none with whom I can freely converse. While I am thus employed, some tedious hours will slip away, and when I return to watch the clock, I shall find that I have disburdened myself of part of the day. You perceive that I do not pretend to write with much consideration of any thing but my own convenience; and, not to conceal from you my real sentiments, the little time which I have spent, against my will, in solitary meditation, has not much contributed to my veneration for authors, I have now sufficient reason to suspect, By the ancient custom of the Muscovites, the that, with all your splendid professions of wismen and women never saw each other till they dom, and seeming regard for truth, you have were joined beyond the power of parting. It may very little sincerity; that you either write what be suspected that by this method many unsuita-you do not think, and willingly impose upon ble matches were produced, and many tempers associated that were not qualified to give pleasure to each other. Yet perhaps, among a people so little delicate, where the paucity of gratifications, and the uniformity of life, gave no opportunity for imagination to interpose its objections, there was not much danger of capricious dislike; and while they felt neither cold nor hunger, they night live quietly together, without any thought of the defects of one another. Amongst us whom knowledge has made nice, and affluence wanton, there are, indeed, more cautions requisite to secure tranquillity; and yet if we observe the manner in which those converse, who have singled out each other for marriage, we shall, perhaps, not think that the Russians lost much by their restraint. For the whole endeavour of both parties, during the times of courtship, is to hinder themselves from being known, and to disguise their natural temper, and real desires, in hypocritical imitation, studied compliance, and continual affectation. From the time that their love is avowed, neither sees the other but in a mask, and the cheat is managed often on both sides with so much art, and discovered afterward with so much abruptness, that each has reason to suspect that some transformation has happened on the wedding night, and that, by a strange imposture, one has been courted, and another married. mankind, or that you take no care to think right, but while you set up yourselves as guides, mislead your followers by credulity or negligence; that you produce to the public whatever notions you can speciously maintain, or elegantly express, without inquiring whether they are just, and transcribe hereditary falsehoods from old authors perhaps as ignorant and careless as yourselves. You may perhaps wonder that I express myself with so much acrimony on a question in which women are supposed to have very little interest; and you are likely enough, for I have seen many instances of the sauciness of scholars, to tell me, that I am more properly employed in playing with my kittens, than in giving myself airs of criticism, and censuring the learned. But you are mistaken, if you imagine that I am to be intimidated by your contempt, or silenced by your reproofs. As I read, I have a right to judge; as I am injured, I have a right to complain; and these privileges, which I have purchased at so dear a rate, I shall not easily be persuaded to resign. To read has, indeed, never been my business, but as there are hours of leisure in the most active life, I have passed the superfluities of time, which the diversions of the town left upon my hands, in turning over a large collection of tragedies and romances, where, amongst other senI desire you, therefore, Mr. Rambler, to ques-timents, common to all authors of this class, I tion all who shall hereafter come to you with matrimonial complaints, concerning their behaviour in the time of courtship, and inform them that they are neither to wonder for repine, when a contract begun with fraud has ended in disappointment. I am, &c. have found almost every page filled with the charms and happiness of a country life: that life to which every statesman in the highest elevation of his prosperity is contriving to retire; that life to which every tragic heroine in some scene or other wishes to have been born, and which is represented as a certain refuge from folly, from anxiety, from passion, and from | ther had a great-great-grandmother that was an guilt. attendant on Anna Bullen, and supposed to have been too much a favourite of the king. It was impossible to read so many passionate exclamations, and soothing descriptions, without feeling some desire to enjoy the state in which all this felicity was to be enjoyed; and therefore I received with raptures the invitation of my good aunt, and expected that by some unknown influence I should find all hopes and fears, jealousies and competitions, vanish from my heart upon my first arrival at the seats of innocence and tranquillity; that I should sleep in halcyon bowers, and wander in elysian gardens, where I should meet with nothing but softness of benevolence, the candour of simplicity, and the cheerfulness of content; where I should see reason exerting her sovereignty over life, without any interruption from envy, avarice, or ambition, and every day passing in such a manner as the severest wisdom should approve. This, Mr. Rambler, I tell you I expected, and this I had by a hundred authors been taught to expect. By this expectation I was led hither, and here I live in perpetual uneasiness, without any other comfort than that of hoping to return to London. Having, since I wrote my former letter, been driven, by the mere necessity of escaping from absolute inactivity, to make myself more acquainted with the affairs and inhabitants of this place, I am now no longer an absolute stranger to rural conversation and employments, but am far from discovering in them more innocence or wisdom, than in the sentiments or conduct of those with whom I have passed more cheerful and more fashionable hours. If once there happens a quarrel between the principal persons of two families, the malignity is continued without end, and it is common for old maids to fall out about some election, in which their grandfathers were competitors; the heart-burnings of the civil war are not yet extinguished; there are two families in the neighbour hood who have destroyed each other's game from the time of Philip and Mary; and when an account came of an inundation, which had injured the plantations of a worthy gentleman, one of the hearers remarked, with exultation, that he might now have some notion, of the ravages committed by his ancestors in their retreat from Bosworth. Thus malice and hatred descend here with an inheritance, and it is necessary to be well versed in history, that the various factions of this country may be understood. You cannot expect to be on good terms with families who are resolved to love nothing in common; and, in selecting your intimates, you are perhaps to consider which party you most favour in the barons' wars. I have often lost the good opinion of my aunt's visitants by confounding the interests of York and Lancaster, and was once censured for sitting si lent when William Rufus was called a tyrant. I have, however, now thrown aside all pretences to circumspection, for I find it impossible in less than seven years to learn all the requisite cautions. At London, if you know your company, and their parents, you are safe; but you are here suspected of alluding to the slips of great-grandmothers, and of reviving contests which were decided in armour by the redoubted knights of ancient times. I hope therefore that you will not condemn my impatience, if I am weary of attending where nothing can be learned, and of quarrelling where there is nothing to contest, and that you will contribute to divert me while I stay here by some facetious performance. I am, Sir, EUPHELIA. It is common to reproach the tea-table, and the park, with giving opportunities and encouragement to scandal. I cannot wholly clear them from the charge; but must, however, observe, in favour of the modish prattlers, that, if not by principle, we are at least by accident less guilty of defamation than the country ladies. For having greater numbers to observe and censure, we are commonly content to charge them only with their own faults or follies, and seldom give way to malevolence, but such as arises from some injury or affront, real or imaginary, offered to ourselves. But in these distant provinces, where the same families inhabit the same houses from No. 47.] TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1750. age to age, they transmit and recount the faults of a whole succession. I have been informed how every estate in the neighbourhood was originally got, and find, if I may credit the accounts given me, that there is not a single acre in the hands of the right owner. I have been told of intrigues between beaux, and toasts that have been now three centuries in their quiet graves, and am often entertained with traditional scandal on persons of whose names there would have been no remembrance, had they not committed somewhat that might disgrace their descendants. Quanquam his solatiis acquiescam, debilitor et frangor eadem illa humanitate quæ me, ut hoc ipsum permitterem, induxit. Non ideo tamen elim durior fieri: nec ignoro alios hujusmodi casus nihil amplius vocare quam damnum; eoque sibi magnos homines et sapientes videri. Qui an magni sapientesque sint, nescio: homines non sunt. Hominis est enim affici dolore, sentire: resistere tamen, et solatia admittere; non solatiis non egere. PLIN. These proceedings have afforded me some comfort in my distress; notwithstanding which, I am still dispirited and unhinged by the same motives of humanity that induced me to grant such indulgences. However, I by no means wish to become less susceptible of tenderness. I know these kind of misfortunes would be estimated by other persons only as common losses, and from such sensations they would conceive themselves great and wise men. I shall not determine either their greatness or their wisdom; but I am certain they have no humanity. It is the part of a man to be affected with grief, to feel sorrow, at the same time that he is to resist it, and to admit of com fort.-Earl of Orrery. In one of my visits I happened to commend the air and dignity of a young lady, who had just left the company; upon which two grave matrons looked with great slyness at each other, and the elder asked me whether I had ever seen the picture of Henry the Eighth. You may imagine that I did not immediately perceive the propriety of the question: but after having waited a while for Or the passions with which the mind of man is information, I was told that the lady's grandmo- | agitated, it may be observed, that they naturally hasten towards their own extinction, by inciting | ble, as the offspring of love, or at least pardonand quickening the attainment of their objects. able, as the effect of weakness; but that it ought Thus fear urges our flight, and desire animates not to be suffered to increase by indulgence, but our progress; and if there are some which per- must give way, after a stated time, to social du haps may be indulged till they outgrow the good ties, and the common avocations of life. It is at appropriated to their satisfaction, as it is fre- first unavoidable, and therefore must be allowed, quently observed of avarice and ambition, yet whether with or without our choice; it may aftertheir immediate tendency is to some means of wards be admitted as a decent and affectionate happiness really existing, and generally within testimony of kindness and esteem; something the prospect. The miser always imagines that will be extorted by nature, and something may there is a certain sum that will fill his heart to be given to the world. But all beyond the bursts the brim; and every ambitious man, like King of passion, or the forms of solemnity, is not only Pyrrhus, has an acquisition in his thoughts that useless, but culpable; for we have no right to is to terminate his labours, after which he shall sacrifice, to the vain longings of affection, that pass the rest of his life in ease or gayety, in re-time which Providence allows us for the task of pose or devotion. our station. Sorrow is perhaps the only affection of the breast that can be excepted from this general remark, and it therefore deserves the particular attention of those who have assumed the arduous province of preserving the balance of the mental constitution. The other passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure. A man at once feels the pain and knows the medicine, to which he is carried with greater haste as the evil which requires it is more excruciating, and cures himself by unerring instinct, as the wounded stags of Crete are related by Elian to have recourse to vulnerary herbs. But for sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. Sorrow is not that regret for negligence or error which may animate us to future care or activity, or that repentance of crimes for which, however irrevocable, our Creator has promised to accept it as an atonement; the pain which arises from these causes has very salutary effects, and is every hour extenuating itself by the reparation of those miscarriages that produce it. Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain. Into such anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune, an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the loss of children or of friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be destroyed by a single blow, have given up for ever the hopes of substituting any other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives to gloom and despondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery. Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterward to be ejected; the mournful ideas, first violently impressed and afterwards willingly received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every thought, to darken gayety, and perplex ratiocination. An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness. From this state of dejection it is very difficult to rise to cheerfulness and alacrity; and therefore many, who have laid down rules of intellectual health, think preservatives easier than remedies, and teach us not to trust ourselves with favourite enjoyments, not to indulge the luxury of fondness, but to keep our minds always suspended in such indifference, that we may change the objects about us without emotion. An exact compliance with this rule might, perhaps, contribute to tranquillity, but surely it would never produce happiness. He that regards none so much as to be afraid of losing them, must live for ever without the gentle pleasures of sympathy and confidence; he must feel no melting fondness, no warmth of benevolence, nor any of those honest joys which nature annexes to the power of pleasing. And as no man can justly claim more tenderness than he pays, he must forfeit his share in that officious and watchful kindness which love only can dictate, and those lenient endearments by which love only can soften life. He may justly be overlooked and neglected by such as have more warmth in their heart; for who would be the friend of him, whom, with whatever assiduity he may be courted, and with whatever services obliged, his principles will not suffer to make equal returns, and who, when you have exhausted all the instances of good-will, can only be prevailed on not to be an enemy? An attempt to preserve life in a state of neutrality and indifference, is unreasonable and vain. If by excluding joy we could shut out grief, the Yet so much is this passion the natural conse- scheme would deserve very serious attention; quence of tenderness and endearment, that how-but since, however we may debar ourselves from ever painful and however useless, it is justly reproachful not to feel it on some occasions; and so widely and constantly has it always prevailed, that the laws of some nations, and the customs of others, have limited a time for the external appearances of grief caused by the dissolution of close alliances, and the breach of domestic union. It seems determined by the general suffrage of mankind, that sorrow is to a certain point lauda happiness, misery will find its way at many inlets, and the assaults of pain will force our regard, though we may withhold it from the invitations of pleasure, we may surely endeavour to raise life above the middle point of apathy at one time, since it will necessarily sink below it at another. But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, yet it must be con fessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of pos- | credulity of those to whom we recount our suf session, will be for some time our sorrow for the ferings. But if the purpose of lamentation be to loss; it is therefore the province of the moralist to inquire whether such pains may not quickly give way to mitigation. Some have thought that the most certain way to clear the heart from its embarrassment is to drag it by force into scenes of merriment. Others imagine, that such a transition is too violent, and recommend rather to soothe it into tranquillity, by making it acquainted with miseries more dreadful and afflictive, and diverting to the calamities of others the regard which we are inclined to fix too closely upon our own misfortunes. It may be doubted whether either of those remedies will be sufficiently powerful. The efficacy of mirth it is not always easy to try, and the indulgence of melancholy may be suspected to be one of those medicines, which will destroy, if it happens not to cure. The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy, will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. "Tis long ere time can mitigate your grief; To wisdom fly, she quickly brings relief. GROTIUS. F. LEWIS. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion. No. 48.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 1, 1750. Non est vivere, sed valere, vita. For life is not to live, but to be well. MART. excite pity, it is surely superfluous for age and weakness to tell their plaintive stories; for pity presupposes sympathy, and a little attention will show them, that those who do not feel pain, seldom think that it is felt; and a short recollection will inform almost every man, that he is only repaid the insult which he has given, since he may remember how often he has mocked infirmity, laughed at its cautions, and censured its im patience. The valetudinarian race have made the care of health ridiculous by suffering it to prevail over all other considerations, as the miser has brought frugality into contempt, by permitting the love of money not to share, but to engross, his mind: they both err alike, by confounding the means with the end; they grasp at health only to be well, as at money only to be rich; and forget that every terrestrial advantage is chiefly valuable as it furnishes abilities for the exercise of virtue. Health is indeed so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures, of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that for a short gratification brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamours of merriment, condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and the couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his own happiness, but as a robber of the public; as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature. There are perhaps very few conditions more to be pitied than that of an active and elevated mind, labouring under the weight of a distempered body. The time of such a man is always spent in forming schemes, which a change of wind hinders him from executing, his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow, pleases his ambition with the fame he shall acquire, or his be nevolence with the good he shall confer. But in the night the skies are overcast, the temper of the air is changed, he wakes in languor, impatience and distraction, and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but to misery. It may be said that disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the AMONG the innumerable follies, by which we lay distinctions which set one man so much above up in our youth repentance and remorse for the another are very little perceived in the gloom of succeeding part of our lives, there is scarce any a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect against which warnings are of less efficacy than entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the neglect of health. When the springs of mo- the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, tion are yet elastic, when the heart bounds with the wit is clouaed, he reasoner perplexed, and vigour, and the eye sparkles with spirit, it is with the hero subdued; where the highest and brightdifficulty that we are taught to conceive the im-est of mortal being inds nothing left him but the becility that every hour is bringing upon us, or to consciousness of innocence. imagine that the nerves which are now braced with so much strength, and the limbs which play with so much activity, will lose all their power under the gripe of time, relax with numbness, and totter with debility. ELPHINSTON. To the arguments which have been used against complaints under the miseries of life, the philosophers have, I think, forgot to add the in There is among the fragments of the Greek poets a short hymn to Health, in which her power of exalting the happiness of life, of heightLening the gifts of fortune, and adding enjoyment to possession, is inculcated with so much force and beauty, that no one, who has ever languished under the discomforts and infirmities of a linger ing disease, can read it without feeling the ima ges dance in his heart, and adding from his own | suscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, experience new vigour to the wish, and from his indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but own imagination new colours to the picture. let us not run from one enemy to another, nor The particular occasion of this little composition take shelter in the arms of sickness. is not known, but it is probable that the author had been sick, and in the first raptures of returning vigour addressed Health in the following manner: Υγίεια πρεσβίστα Μακάρων, Τὸ λειπόμενον βιοτᾶς Βασιληίδος ἀρχᾶς, ἤ πόθων, Οὓς κρυφίοις Αφροδίτης ἄρκυσιν θηρεύομεν, Μετὰ σεῖο, μάκαιρα Υγίεια, Σέθεν δὲ χωρὶς, οὐδεὶς, εὐδαίμων πέλει my Projecere animam ! quam vellent athere in alto For healthful indigence in vain they pray, VIRG. Those who lose their health in an irregular and impetuous pursuit of literary accomplishments are yet less to be excused; for they ought to know that the body is not forced beyond its strength, but with the loss of more vigour than is proportionate to the effect produced. Whoever takes up life beforehand, by depriving himself of rest and refreshment, must not only pay back the hours, but pay them back with usury; and for the gain of a few months but half enjoyed must give up years to the listlessness of languor, and the implacability of pain. They whose endeavour is mental excellence, will learn, perhaps too late, how much it is endangered by diseases of the body, and find that knowledge may easily be lost in the starts of melancholy, the flights of impatience, and the peevishness of decrepitude. "Health, most venerable of the powers of heaven! with thee may the remaining part of life be passed, nor do thou refuse to bless me with thy residence. For whatever there is of beauty or of pleasure in wealth, in descendants, or in sovereign command, the highest summit of human enjoyment, or in those objects of human desire which we endeavour to chase into the toils of love; whatever delight, or whatever so- No. 49.] TUESDAY, Sept. 4, 1750. lace is granted by the celestials, to soften our fatigues, in thy presence, thou parent of happiness, all those joys spread out and flourish; in thy presence blooms the spring of pleasure, and without thee no man is happy.' Such is the power of health, that without its co-operation every other comfort is torpid and lifeless, as the powers of vegetation without the sun. And yet this bliss is commonly thrown away in thoughtless negligence, or in foolish experiments on our own strength; we let it perish without remembering its value, or waste it to show how much we have to spare; it is sometimes given up to the management of levity and chance, and sometimes sold for the applause of jollity and debauchery. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei HOR. Whole Horace shall not die; his songs shall save CREECH. THE first motives of human actions are those appetites which Providence has given to man in common with the rest of the inhabitants of the earth. Immediately after our birth, thirst and hunger incline us to the breast, which we draw by instinct, like other young creatures, and when we are satisfied, we express our uneasiness by importunate and incessant cries, till we have obtained a place or posture proper for repose. Health is equally neglected, and with equal impropriety, by the votaries of business and the The next call that rouses us from a state of infollowers of pleasure. Some men ruin the fabric activity, is that of our passions; we quickly beof their bodies by incessant revels, and others by gin to be sensible of hope and fear, love and haintemperate studies; some batter it by excess, tred, desire and aversion; these arising from the and others sap it by inactivity. To the noisy power of comparison and reflection, extend their rout of bacchanalian rioters, it will be to little range wider, as our reason strengthens, and our purpose that advice is offered, though it requires knowledge enlarges. At first we have no thought no great abilities to prove, that he loses pleasure of pain, but when we actually feel it; we afterwho loses health; their clamours are too loud for wards begin to fear it, yet not before it approaches the whispers of caution, and they run the course us very nearly: but by degrees we discover it at of life with too much precipitance to stop at the a greater distance, and find it lurking in remote call of wisdom. Nor perhaps will they that are consequences. Our terror in time improves into busied in adding thousands to thousands, pay caution, and we learn to look round with vigilmuch regard to him that shall direct them to has-ance and solicitude, to stop all the avenues at ten more slowly to their wishes. Yet since lovers of money are generally cool, deliberate and thoughtful, they might surely consider, that the greater good ought not to be sacrificed to the less. Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions, are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or re which misery can enter, and to perform or endure many things in themselves toilsome and unpleasing, because we know by reason or by experience, that our labour will be overbalanced by the reward, that it will either procure some positive good, or avert some evil greater than itself. But as the soul advances to a fuller exercise of its powers, the animal appetites and the passions immediately arising from them, are not sufficient |