relation to twenty different people. There are indeed circumstances wherein men of honeft natures may become liable to debts, by fome unadvised behaviour in any great point of their life, or mortgaging a man's honefty as a fecurity for that of another, and the like; but thefe inftances are fo particular and circumftantiated, that they cannot come within general confiderations: For one fuch cafe as one of thefe, there are ten, where a man, to keep up a farce of retinue and grandeur within his own houfe, fhall fhrink at the expectation of furly demands at his doors. The debtor is the creditor's criminal, and all the officers of power and ftate, whom we behold make fo great a figure, are no other than fo many perfons in authority to make good his charge against him. Human fociety 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 fa from generation to generation. The father mortgages when his fon is very young and the boy is to marry as foon as he is at age to redeem it, and find portions for his fifters. This, forfooth, is no great inconvenience to him; for he may wench, keep a pub lick table or feed dogs, like a worthy English gentleman, till he has out-run half his eftate, and leave the fame incumbrance upon his firft-born, and fo, on, till one man of more vigour than ordinary goes quite through the estate, or fome man of fenfe comes into it, and fcorns to have an eftate in partnership, that is to fay, liable to the demand or infult of any man living. There is my friend Sir ANDREW, tho" for many years a great and general trader, was never the defendant in a law-fuit, in all the perplexity of bufinefs, and the Iniquity of mankind at prefent: No one had any. colour for the leaft 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 general never to have fuffered a. difadvantage in fight. How different from this gentleman is Jack Truepenny, who has been an old acquaintance of Sir ANDREW and

myfelf

N° 82 myfelf from boys, but could never learn our caution. Jack has a whorish unrefifting 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 fervice that comes first. When he was at school, he was whipped thrice a week for faults he took upon him to excufe others; fince he came into the bufinefs of the world, he has been arrested twice or thrice a year for debts he had nothing to do with, but as furety for others; and I remember when a friend of his had fuffered in the vice of the town, all the phyfick his friend took was conveyed to him by Jack, and infcribed, A bolus or an electuary for Mr: Truepenny.' Jack had a good estate left him, which came to nothing; because he believed all who pretended to demands upon it. This eafinefs and credulity destroy all the other merit he has; and he has all his life been a facrifice to others, without ever receiving thanks, or doing one good action.

1 will end this difcourfe with a fpeech which I heard Jack make to one of his creditors, (of whom he deferved gentler ufage) after lying a whole night in cuftody at his fuit.

SIR,

You

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 fee there is fuch a man as you in the world. I am obliged to you for the diffidence I fhall have all the reft of my life: I shall hereafter truft no man so far as to be in his debt.

R

Tuesday,

Animum pittura pafcit inani.

Virg. Æn. 1. v. 468.

And with an empty picture feeds his mind.

W

DRYDEN.

HEN the weather hinders me from taking my diverfions without doors, I frequently make a little party with two or three felect friends, to vifit any thing curious that may be feen under covert. My principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, infomuch that when I have found the weather fet in to be very bad, I have taken a whole day's journey to fee a gallery that is furnished by the hands of great mafters. By this means, when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the earth fwims in rain, and all nature wears a lowring countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable scenes into the vifionary worlds of art; where I meet with fhining landskips, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all thofe other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and difperfe that gloominefs which is apt to hang upon it in thofe dark difconfolate feafons.

I was fome weeks ago in a courfe of thefe diverfions; which had taken fuch an entire poffeffion of my imagination, that they formed in it a fhort morning's dream, which I fhall communicate to my reader, rather as the firft sketch and outlines of a vifion, than as a finished piece.

I dreamt that I was admitted into a long fpacious gallery, which had one fide 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 fide of the living, I faw feveral perfons bufy in drawing, colouring, and defigning; on the fide of the dead painters, I could not difcover more than one perfon at work, who was exceeding flow in his motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches.

I was refolved to examine the several artists that stood before me, and accordingly applied myself to the fide of the living. The firft I obferved at work in this part of the gallery was VANITY, with his hair tied behind him in a ribbon, and dressed like a Frenchman. All the faces he drew were very remarkable for their fmiles, and a certain fmirking air which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either fex. The toujours gai appeared even in his judges, bishops, and privy-counfellors: In a word, all his men were petits maitres, and all his women coquettes. The drapery of his figures was extremely well-fuited to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring colours that could be mixt together; every part of the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured to diftinguish itself above the reff.

On the left hand of VANITY ftood a laborious workman, who I found was his humble admirer, and copied after him. He was dressed like a German, and had a very hard name that founded something like STUPIDITY.

The third artift that I looked over was FANTASQUE, dressed like a Venetian scaramouch. He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt very much in diftortions and grimaces. He would fometimes affright himself with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil. In fhort, the most elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream; and one could fay nothing more of his finest figures, than: that they were agreeable monfters.

The fourth perfon I examined was very remarkable for his hafty hand, which left his pictures fo unfinished, that the beauty in the picture (which was defigned to continue as a monument of it to pofterity) faded fooner than in the perfon after whom it was drawn. He made fo much hafte to dispatch his bufinefs, that he neither gave himself. time to clean his pencils, nor mix his colours. The name: of this expeditious workman was AVARICE.

Not far from this artift, L. faw another of a quite different nature, who was dreffed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of INDUSTRY. His figures were wonderfully laboured: If he drew the portraiture of a man, he did not omit a fingle hair in his face; if the figure of a fhip, there was not a rope among

among the tackle that efcaped him. He had likewife hung a great part of the wall with night-pieces, that feemed to fhew themfelves by the candles which were lighted up in feveral parts of them; and were fo inflamed by the fun-fhine which accidentally fell upon them, that at first fight I could fcarce forbear crying out, Fire.

The five foregoing artists were the most confiderable on this fide the gallery; there were indeed feveral others whom I had not time to look into. One of them, however, I could not forbear observing, who was very bufy in retouching the fineft pieces, tho' he produced no originals of his own. His pencil aggravated every feature that was before over-charged, loaded every defect, and poifoned every colour it touched. Though this workman did fo much mischief on the fide of the living, he never turned his towards that of the dead. His name was ENVY.

eye

Having taken a curfory view of one fide of the gallery, I turned myfelf to that which was filled by the works of thofe great masters that were dead; when immediately I fancied myfelf ftanding before a multitude of fpectators, and thoufands of eyes looking upon me at once; for all before me appeared fo like men and women, that I almoft forgot they were pictures. Raphael's figures food in one row, Titian's in another, Guido Rheni's in a third. One part of the wall was peopled by Hannibal Carrache, another by Correggio, and another by Rubens. To be fhort, there was not a great mafter among the dead who had not contributed to the embellishment of this fide of the gallery. The perfons that owed their being to the fe feveral mafters, appeared all of them to be real and alive, and differed among one another only in the variety of their fhapes, complexions, and clothes; fo that they looked like different nations of the fame fpecies.

Obferving an old man (who was the fame perfon I before mentioned, as the only artist that was at work on this fide of the gallery) creeping up and down from one picture to another, and retouching all the fine pieces that ftood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions. I found his pencil was fo very light, that it worked imperceptibly, and after a thousand touches, fcarce