it operates upon those whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced, that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude, or desired with eagerness.1 1 "Although upon most occasions I never heard a more strenuous advocate for the advantages of wealth than Dr. Johnson, he this day, I know not from what caprice, took the other side. 'I have not observed (said he) that men of very large fortunes enjoy anything extraordinary that makes happiness. What has the Duke of Bedford? What has the Duke of Devonshire ?'"-Boswell's Johnson, iv. 126. When they were visiting Lord Scarsdale's fine seat at Keddlestone "One should think (said I) that the proprietor of all this must be happy.' 'Nay, Sir (said Johnson), all this excludes but one evil-poverty.'" Boswell adds that his wife, hearing of this, observed: "It is true all this excludes only one evil; but how much good does it let in !”—Ib. iii. 160. No. 59. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1750.1 Est aliquid fatale malum per verba levare :2 Strangulat inclusus dolor, atque exæstuat intus; -F. LEWIS. T is common to distinguish men by the names of animals which they are supposed to resemble. Thus a hero is frequently termed a lion, and a statesman a fox, an extortioner gains the appel 1 From the character of Suspirius in this number of the Rambler, writes Boswell," Goldsmith took that of Croaker in his comedy of the Good-Natured Man, as Johnson told me he acknowledged to him, and which is indeed very obvious."-Boswell's Johnson, i. 213. Miss Burney records that one day at Streatham, when she and Mrs. Thrale were reading this Rambler, Dr. Johnson came in. "We told him what we were about. 'Ah! Madam,' cried he, 'Goldsmith was not scrupulous; but he would have been a great man had he known the real value of his own internal resources.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 83. Suspirius, perhaps, also gave a hint to Goldsmith for the character of "the philosopher of the desponding sort in The Citizen of the World, Letter 91. " 2 In the original, levari. Ovid, Tristia, v. i. 59. 3 In the original, gelido. lation of vulture, and a fop the title of monkey. There is also among the various anomalies of character, which a survey of the world exhibits, a species of beings in human form, which may be properly marked out as the screech-owls of mankind. These screech-owls seem to be settled in an opinion that the great business of life is to complain, and that they were born for no other purpose than to disturb the happiness of others, to lessen the little comforts, and shorten the short pleasures of our condition, by painful remembrances of the past, or melancholy prognostics of the future; their only care is to crash the rising hope, to damp the kindling transport, and allay the golden hours of gaiety with the hateful dross of grief and suspicion. To those whose weakness of spirits, or timidity of temper, subjects them to impressions from others, and who are to suffer by fascination, and catch the contagion of misery, it is extremely unhappy to live within the compass of a screechowl's voice; for it will often fill their ears in the hour of dejection, terrify them with apprehensions, which their own thoughts would never have produced, and sadden, by intruded sorrows, the day which might have been passed in amusements or in business; it will burthen the heart with unnecessary discontents, and weaken for a time that love of life which is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking. Though I have, like the rest of mankind, many failings and weaknesses, I have not yet, by either friends or enemies, been charged with superstition; I never count the company which I enter, and I look at the new moon indifferently over either shoulder. I have, like most other philosophers, often heard the cuckoo without money in my pocket, and have been sometimes reproached as fool-hardy for not turning down my eyes when a raven flew over my head. I never go home abruptly because a snake crosses my way, nor have any particular dread of a climacterical year1; yet I confess that, with all my scorn of old women, and their tales, I consider it as an unhappy day when I happen to be greeted, in the morning, by Suspirius the screech-owl. I have now known Suspirius fifty-eight years and four months, and have never yet passed an hour with him in which he has not made some attack upon my quiet. When we were first ac quainted, his great topic was the misery of youth without riches; and whenever we walked out together, he solaced me with a long enumeration of pleasures, which, as they were beyond the reach of my fortune, were without the verge of my desires, and which I should never have considered as the objects of a wish, had not his unseasonable representations placed them in my sight. 1 "Certain observable years are supposed to be attended with some considerable change in the body; as the seventh year; the twenty-first, made up of three times seven; the forty-ninth, made up of seven times seven; the sixty-third being nine times seven; and the eighty-first, which is ni times nine; which two last are called the grand climacterics. -Johnson's Dictionary. Another of his topics is the neglect of merit,1 with which he never fails to amuse every man whom he sees not eminently fortunate. If he meets with a young officer, he always informs him of gentlemen whose personal courage is unquestioned, and whose military skill qualifies them to command armies, that have, notwithstanding all their merit, grown old with subaltern commissions. For a genius in the church, he is always provided with a curacy for life. The lawyer he informs of many men of great parts and deep study, who have never had an opportunity to speak in the courts: And meeting Serenus the physician, "Ah, doctor," says he, "what a-foot "still, when so many blockheads are rattling in "their chariots? I told you seven years ago that you would never meet with encouragement, "and I hope you will now take more notice, "when I tell you that your Greek, and your diligence, and your honesty, will never enable you to live like yonder apothecary, who prescribes to his own shop, and laughs at the physician." 66 Suspirius has, in his time, intercepted fifteen authors in their way to the stage; persuaded nine and thirty merchants to retire from a prosperous trade for fear of bankruptcy, broke off an hundred and thirteen matches by prognostications of unhappiness, and enabled the small-pox to kill nineteen ladies, by perpetual alarm of the loss of beauty. "Indeed, Mr. Honeywood, I never see you but you put me in mind of poor-Dick. Ah, there was merit neglected for you!"-The Good-Natur'd Man, Act 1. |
