her fingers to those purposes, which they were certainly intended by nature to fulfil. Add to these accomplishments, so requisite to make the married state happy, that I am not much turned of fifty, can tie on my cravat, fasten a button, or mend a hole in my stocking without any assistance. I am, Sir, your humble servant, No 116. THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1756. Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre LUCRET. Here each profession, and it's tribe we view, THOSE parents, who are unable to give their sons an estate, regard the educating them to one of the three great professions of law, physic, and divinity, as putting them in the high road to acquire one. Hence it happens, that nineteen parts out of twenty of our young men are brought up with a view to Lambeth, the Seals, or Warwick-lane. But alas! their hopes and expectations of rising by their professions are often frustrated; and the surprising numbers, engaged in running the same race, necessarily jostle one another. For though the courts of justice are tolerably supplied with matters of litigation; though there are many invalids and valetudinarians; and though great part of England is laid out into church preferinents; yet there is not in all the kingdom sufficient matter for legal contention, to employ a tenth part of those, who have been trained to engross deeds in their chamber, or to harangue at the bar: the number of patients bears no proportion to the swarms of the faculty, nor would it, though a consultation were to sit on every sick inan, like carrion-flies upon a carcase: and the prodigious number of reverend divines infinitely exceeds that of those bishopricks, deaneries, prebends, rectories, vicarages, &c. which, when they are ordained, they conceive it to be part of their holy orders to fill. From these frequent failures in each of the professions, the younger sons of great men often wish, that they had been permitted to disgrace the family by some mercantile, or more plebeian occupation; while the son of the mechanic curses the pride of his father, who, instead of securing him a livelihood in his own business, has condemned him to starve in pudding-sleeves, that he may do honour to his relations by being a gentleman. The three professions being thus crowded with more candidates for business and preferment, than can possibly be employed or prometed, has occasioned several irregularities in the conduct of the followers of each of them. The utter impossibility of supporting themselves in the usual method of practising law, physic, or divinity, without clients, patients, or parishioners, has induced the labourers in each of those vocations to seek out new veins and branches. The young solicitor, who finds he has nothing to do, now he is out of his clerkship, offers his assistance, in the transaction of all law affairs, by the public papers, and, like the advertising tailors, promises to work cheaper than any of his brethren while the young barrister, after having exhibited his tye-wig in West'minster-hall, during several terms, to no purpose, is obliged to forego the hope of rivalling Murray and Coke, and content himself with being the oracle of the courts of Carolina or Jamaica. The graduate in medicine, finding himself unsolicited for prescription or advice, and likely to starve by practising physic secundum artem, flies in the face of the college, and professes to cure all diseases by nostrums unmentioned in the dispensatory. He commences a thriving quack, and soon makes his way through the important medical degrees of walking on foot, riding on horseback, dispensing his drugs from a one-horse chaise, and lastly lolling in a chariot. The divine, without living, cure, or lectureship, may perhaps incur transportation for illegal marriages, set up a theatrical-oratoricalBillingsgate chapel under the shelter of the tolerationact and the butchers of Clare-market, or kindle the inward light in the bosoms of the saints of Moorfields, and the Magdalens of Broad St. Giles's. But notwithstanding these shoots, ingrafted, as it were, into the main body of the professions, it is still impossible for the vast multitude of divines, lawyers, and physicians, to maintain themselves, at any rate, within the pale of their respective employments. They have often been compelled, at least, to call in adventitious ones, and have sometimes totally abandoned their original undertakings. They have frequently made mutual transitions into the occupations of each other, or have perhaps embraced other employments; which, though distinct from all three, and not usually dignified with the title of professions, may fairly be considered in that light; since they are the sole means of support to many thousands, who toiled in vain for a subsistence in the three capital ones. On these professions, and their various followers, I shall here make some observations. The first of these professions is an author. The mart of literature is, indeed, one of the chief resorts of unbeneficed divines, and lawyers and physicians without practice. There are, at present, in the world of authors, doctors of physic, who (to use the phrase : of one of them) have no great fatigue from the business of their profession: many clergymen, whose sermons are the most inconsiderable part of their compositions and several gentlemen of the inns of court, who, instead of driving the quill over skins of parchment, lead it through all the mazes of modern novels, critiques, and pamphlets. Many likewise have embraced this profession, who were never bred to any other and I might also mention the many bankrupt tradesinen and broken artificers, who daily enter into this new way of business, if, by pursuing it in the same mechanical manner as their former occupations, they might not rather be regarded as following a trade, than a profession. The second of these professions is a player. The ingenious gentlemen, who assume the persons of the drama, are composed of as great a variety of characters as those they represent. The history of the stage might afford many instances of those, who in the trade of death might have slain men, who have condescended to deal counterfeit slaughter from their right hands, and administer harmless phials and bowls of poison. We might read also of persons, whose fists were intended to beat the "drum ecclesiastic," who have themselves become theatrical volunteers. In regard to the law, many, who were originally designed to manifest their talents for elocution in Westminster-hall, have diplayed them in Drury-lane; and it may be added, on theatrical authority, that Not e'en Attorneys have this rage withstood, I will not so far affront those gentlemen, who were at any time engaged in the study of the three honourable professions of law, physic, and divinity, as to suppose that any of them have ever taken the more fashionable employment of a pimp: yet it is certain, that this is a very common and lucrative profession, and that very many provide themselves with the necessaries of life, by administering to the pleasures of others. A convenient cousin, sister, or wife, has sometimes proved the chief means of making a fortune; and the tongue of slander has often ventured to affirm, that the price of procuration has been paid with a place or a bishoprick. The most advantageous and genteel of all professions is gaming. Whoever will make this science his study, will find it the readiest way to riches, and most certain passport to the best company for the polite world will always admit any one to their society, who will condescend to win their money. The followers of this profession are very numerous; which is, indeed, no wonder, when we reflect on the numbers it supports in ease and affluence, at no greater pains than packing the cards or cogging the dice, and no more risk than being sometimes tweaked by the nose, or kicked out of company: besides which, this profession daily receives new lustre from the many persons of quality, that follow it, and crowd into it with as much eagerness, as into the army. Among gamesters may also be found lawyers, who get more by being masters of all the cases in Hoyle, than by their knowledge of those, recorded in the report-books; physicians, the chief object of whose attention is the circulation of the E. O. table; and divines, who, we may suppose, were hinted at by a famous wit in a certain assembly, when, among the other benefits resulting from a double tax upon dice, he thought fit to enumerate, that it might possibly prevent the clergy from playing at back-gammon. But the more danger the more honour: and therefore no profession is more honourable than that of a highwayman. Who the followers of this profession 4 |