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my mind what tempers were most apt to fall into this error of life, as well as the misfortune it must needs be to languish under such pressures. As for myself, my natural aversion to that sort of conversation which makes a figure with the generality of mankind, exempts me from any temptations to expense; and all my business lies within a very narrow compass, which is only to give an honest man who takes care of my estate proper vouchers for his quarterly payments to me, and observe what linen my laundress brings and takes away with her once a-week. My steward brings his receipt ready for my signing; and I have a pretty implement with the respective names of shirts, cravats, handkerchiefs, and stockings, with proper numbers, to know how to reckon with my laundress. This being almost all the business I have in the world for the care of my own affairs, I am at full leisure to observe upon what others do with relation to their equipage and economy.

When I walk the street and observe the hurry about me in this town.

Where, with like haste, through different ways they run;
Some to undo, and some to be undone ;

I say, when I behold this vast variety of persons and humours, with the pains they both take for the accomplishment of the ends mentioned in the above verses of Denham*, I cannot much wonder at the endeavour after gain, but am extremely astonished that men can be so insensible of the danger of running into debt. One would think it impossible a man who is given to contract debts should not know that his creditor has, from that moment in which he transgresses payment, so much as that demand comes to, in his debtor's honour, liberty, and

* From his poem entitled Cooper's Hill,

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fortune: one would think he did not know that his creditor can say the worst thing imaginable of him, to wit, That he is unjust,' without defamation; and can seize his person, without being guilty of an assault. Yet such is the loose and abandoned turn of some men's minds, that they can live under these constant apprehensions, and still go on to increase the cause of them. Can there be a more low and servile condition, than to be ashamed or afraid to see any one man breathing? Yet he that is much in debt is in that condition with relation to twenty different people. There are indeed circumstances wherein men of honest natures may become liable to debts, by some unadvised behaviour in any great point of their life, or mortgaging a man's honesty as a security for that of another, and the like: but these instances are so particular and circumstantiated, that they cannot come within general considerations. For one such case as one of these, there are ten, where a man, to keep up a farce of retinue and grandeur within his own house, shall shrink at the expectation of surly demands at his doors. The debtor is the creditor's criminal; and all the officers of power and state, whom we behold make so great a figure, are no other than so many persons in authority to make good his charge against him. Human society depends upon his having the vengeance law allots him; and the debtor owes his liberty to his neighbour, as much as the murderer does his life to his prince.

Our gentry are, generally speaking, in debt: and many families have put it into a kind of method of being so from generation to generation. The father mortgages when his son is very young: and the boy is to marry, as soon as he is at age, to redeem it and find portions for his sisters. This, forsooth, is no great inconvenience to him; for he may wench, keep a public table, or feed dogs, like a worthy English

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gentleman, till he has out-run half his estate, and leave the same encumbrance upon his first-born, and so on; till one man of more vigour than ordinary goes quite through the estate, or some man of sense comes into it, and scorns to have an estate in partnership, that is to say, liable to the demand or insult of any man living. There is my friend Sir Andrew, though for many years a great and general trader, was never the defendant in a lawsuit; in all the perplexity of business, and the iniquity of mankind at present, no one had any colour for the least complaint against his dealings with him. This is certainly as uncommon, and in its proportion as laudable, in a citizen, as it is in a generál never to have suffered a disadvantage in fight. How different from this gentleman is Jack Truepenny, who has been an old acquaintance of Sir Andrew and myself from boys, but could never learn our caution. Jack has a whorish unresisting good-nature, which makes him incapable of having a property in any thing. His fortune, his reputation, his time, and his capacity, are at any man's service that comes first. When he was at school, he was whipped thrice a-week for faults he took upon him to excuse others; since he came into the business of the world, he has been arrested twice or thrice ayear for debts he had nothing to do with, but as surety for others; and I remember, when a friend of his had suffered in the vice of the town, all the physic his friend took was conveyed to him by Jack, and inscibed a bolus or an electuary for Mr. Trupenny.' Jack had a good estate left him, which came to nothing; because he believed all who pretended to demands upon it. This easiness and credulity destroy all the other merit he has; and he has all his life been a sacrifice to others, without ever receiving thanks, or doing one good action.

I will end this discourse with a speech which I

heard Jack make to one of his creditors, of whom he deserved gentler usage, after lying a whole night in custody at his suit.

Sir, your ingratitude for the many kindnesses I have done you, shall not make me unthankful for the good you have done me, in letting me see there is such a man as you in the world. I am obliged to you for the diffidence I shall have all the rest of my life: I shall hereafter trust no man,so far as to be in his debt.'

R

No. 83. TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 1711.

· Animum picturâ pascit inani.

VIRG. EN. i. 464.

And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.

WHEN the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without doors, I frequently make a little party with two or three select friends, to visit any thing curious that may be seen under covert. My principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch that when I have found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a whole day's journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands of great masters. By this means, when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a lowering countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable scenes into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas,

and disperse that gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate seasons.

I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions; which had taken such an entire possession of my imagination, that they formed in it a short morning's dream, which I shall communicate to my reader, rather as the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as a finished piece.

I dreamt that I was admitted into a long, spacious gallery, which had one side covered with pieces of all the famous painters who are now living, and the other with the works of the greatest masters that are dead.

On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in drawing, colouring, and designing. On the side of the dead painters, I could not discover more than one person at work, who was exceeding slow in his motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches.

I was resolved to examine the several artists that stood before me, and accordingly applied myself to the side of the living. The first I observed at work in this part of the gallery was Vanity, with his hair tied behind him in a riband, and dressed like a Frenchman. All the faces he drew were very remarkable for their smiles, and a certain smirking air which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either sex. The toujours gai appeared even in his judges, bishops, and privy-councillors. In a word, all his men were petits maitres, and all his women coquettes. The drapery of his figures was extremely well suited to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring colours that could be mixed together; every part of the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself above the rest.

On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I found was his humble admirer, and copied after him. He was dressed like a German, and

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