paired his health, and undermined a constitution naturally vigorous and happy and as Crito has never been able to lay up a sum sufficient to procure him the assistance which the debility of sickness and age require, he was obliged to insure his life, and borrow at exorbitant interest a few pounds to enable him to perform this journey to Bath, which alone could restore his health and spirits; and now, as his money and credit are exhausted, he will be compelled to abandon this place, when his cure is only half-effected; and must retire to languish in a little lodging in London, while his readers and admirers content themselves with lamenting his distress, and wondering how it comes to pass that nothing has been done for a man of such distinguished abilities and integrity.

Doctor Pamper is possessed of three large ecclesiastical preferments: his motive for coming hither is somewhat singular; it is, because his parishes cannot furnish him with a set of persons that are equal to him in the knowledge of whist; he is, therefore, necessitated every season to frequent this place, where alone he can meet with gamesters that are worth contending with.

Spumosius, who is one of the liveliest of freethinkers, had not been three months at the Temple before he became irresistibly enamoured of the beauty of virtue. He always carried a Shaftesbury in his pocket, and used to read and explain the striking passages to large circles at the coffee-house; he was of opinion that for purity and perspicuity, elegance of style, and force of reasoning, the Characteristics were incomparable, and were models equally proper for regulating our taste and our morals. He discovered a delicate artificial connection in these discourses, which to vulgar eyes appear to be loose and incoherent rhapsodies: nay, he clearly perceived, that each treatise depended on the foregoing, and altogether

composed one uniform whole, and the noblest system of truth and virtue that had been imparted to mankind. He quarrelled irreconcilably with his dearest friend, who happened to hint, that the style was affected and unharmonious, the metaphors far-fetched and violent, and frequently coarse and illiberal, the arguments inconclusive and unfair, the raillery frigid and insipid, and totally different from the Attic irony of Socrates, which the author presumed to propose for his pattern. Spumosius always disdained to practise virtue on the mean and mercenary motives of reward and punishment; and was convinced, that so excellent a creature as man might be kept in order by the silken cords of delicacy and decorum. He, therefore, frequently sneered at the priestly notions of heaven and hell, as fit only to be entertained by vulgar and sordid minds. But being lately attacked by a severe distemper, he betrayed fears that were not compatible with the boldness of his former professions; and terrified at the approach of death, has had recourse to various remedies, and is at last arrived here, as full of doubt as of disease, but feeling more acute pain in his mind than can possibly be inflicted on his body.

Mr. Gull was lately a soap-boiler at Chester, but having accumulated a vast fortune by trade, he is now resolved to be polite, and enjoy his money with taste. He has brought his numerous family of aukward girls hither, only because he has heard that people of fashion, do at this time of the year, generally take a trip to Bath and for the same reason he intends in the spring to make a journey to Paris, and will, I dare say, commence virtuoso on his return, and be a professed judge of dress, pictures, and furniture.

I must not forget to inform you that we have the company of Captain Gairish, a wit and a critic, who pretends he is perfectly acquainted with the best

writers of the age, and whose opinion on every new work is deemed decisive in the Pump-room. The prefaces of Dryden, and the French critics, are the sources from which his immense literature is derived. Dacier's Plutarch has enabled him to talk familiarly of the most celebrated Greeks and Romans, and Bayle's Dictionary finished him for a scholar. Sometimes he vouchsafes to think the Adventurer tolerable; but he generally exclaims, How grave and sententious! Good Heavens! what more Greek! This circumstance will ruin the credit of the paper. They will not take my advice, for you must know I am intimate with all the authors of it; they are ten in number; and some of them-But as I have been entrusted with their secrets, I must disclose no more. To tell you the truth, I have given them a few essays myself, which I have written for my amusement upon guard.'

If these portraits, which are faithfully copied from the life, should amuse you, I may, perhaps, take an opportunity of adding to the collection.

I am,

Mr. Adventurer, Yours,

PHILOMEDES,

N° 130. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1754.

Qui non est bodie, cras minus aptus erit.

MART.

The man will surely fail who dares delay,
And lose to-morrow that has lost to-day.

IT was said by Raleigh, when some of his friends lamented his confinement under a sentence of death, which he knew not how soon he might suffer, that the world itself was only a larger prison, out of which some were every day selected for execution.' That there is a time when every man is struck with a sense of this awful truth, I do not doubt; and, perhaps, a hasty speculatist would conclude that its influence would be stronger in proportion as it more frequently occurred but upon every mind that is become familiar with calamity, calamity loses its force; and misery grows less only by its continuance, because those who have long suffered, lose their sensibility.

If he, who lies down at night in the vigour and health of five-and-twenty, should rise in the morning with the infirmities of fourscore, it is not improbable that he would sink under a sense of his condition; regret of enjoyments which could never return, would preclude all that remained, and the last mournful effects of decay would be hastened and aggravated by anticipation. But those who have been enfeebled by degrees, who have been shaken ten years by the

the palsy; or crippled by the gout, frequently totter about upon their crutches with an air of waggish jocularity, are always ready to entertain their company with a jest, meet their acquaintance with a toothless grin, and are the first to toast a young beauty when they can scarce lift the glass to their lips. Even criminals, who knew that in the morning they were to die, have often slept in the night; though very few of those who have been committed for a capital offence, which they knew would be easily proved, have slept the first night after they were confined. Danger so sudden and so imminent alarms, confounds, and terrifies; but after a time stupor supplies the want of fortitude; and as the evil approaches, it is in effect less terrible, except in the moment when it arrives and then, indeed, it is common to lament that insensibility, which before perhaps was voluntarily increased by drunkenness or dissipation, by solitary intemperance or tumultuous company.

There is some reason to believe, that this power of the world to come,' as it is expressed in the sublimity of Eastern metaphor, is generally felt at the same age. The dread of death has seldom been found to intrude upon the cheerfulness, simplicity, and innocence of children; they gaze at a funeral procession with as much vacant curiosity, as at any other shew, and see the world change before them without the least sense of their own share in the vicissitude. In youth, when all the appetites are strong, and every gratification is heightened by no velty, the mind resists mournful impressions with a kind of elastic power, by which the signature that is forced upon it is immediately effaced when this tumult first subsides, while the attachment of life is yet strong, and the mind begins to look forward, and concert measures by which those enjoyments may be secured which it is solicitous to keep, or

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