perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he muft expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politenefs, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

NUMB. 19. TUESDAY, May 22, 1750.

Dum te caufidicum, dum te modo rhetora fingis,
Et non decernis, Taure, quid esse velis,
Peleos Priami tranfit, vel Neftoris atas,
Et ferum fuerat jam tibi definere.——
Eja, age, rumpe moras, quo te spectabimus ufque?
Dum quid fis dubitas, jam potes effe nihil.

To rhetorick now, and now to law inclin'd,
Uncertain where to fix thy changing mind;
Old Priam's age or Neftor's may be out,
And thou, O Taurus, ftill go on in doubt.
Come then, how long such wavering shall we see ?
Thou may'st doubt on: thou now can'ft nothing be.

MART.

F. LEWIS.

T is never without very melancholy reflections,

that we can obferve the misconduct, or miscarriage, of those men, who feem, by the force of understanding, or extent of knowledge, exempted from the general frailties of human nature, and privileged from the common infelicities of life. Though the world is crowded with fcenes of calamity, we look upon the general mass of wretchednefs with very little regard, and fix our eyes upon the ftate of par

ticular

ticular persons, whom the eminence of their qualities marks out from the multitude; as in reading an ac count of a battle, we feldom reflect on the vulgar heaps of flaughter, but follow the hero, with our whole attention, through all the varieties of his fortune, without a thought of the thousands that are falling round him.

With the fame kind of anxious veneration I have for many years been making obfervations on the life of Polyphilus, a man whom all his acquaintances have, from his first appearance in the world, feared for the quickness of his difcernment, and admired for the multiplicity of his attainments, but whose progrefs in life, and usefulness to mankind, has been hindered by the fuperfluity of his knowledge, and the celerity of his mind.

Polyphilus was remarkable, at the fchool, for furpaffing all his companions, without any visible application, and at the univerfity was diftinguished equally for his fuccefsful progrefs as well through the thorny mazes of science, as the flowery path of politer literature, without any ftrict confinement to hours of study, or remarkable forbearance of the common amusements of young men.

When Polyphilus was at the age in which men usually chuse their profeffion, and prepare to enter into a public character, every academical eye was fixed upon him; all were curious to enquire, what this univerfal genius would fix upon for the employment of his life; and no doubt was made but that he would leave all his contemporaries behind him, and mount to the higheft honours of that class

in which he should inlift himself, without thofe delays and paufes which must be endured by meaner abilities.

Polyphilus, though by no means infolent or af fuming, had been fufficiently encouraged, by uninterrupted fuccefs, to place great confidence in his own parts; and was not below his companions in the indulgence of his hopes, and expectations of the aftonishment with which the world would be ftruck, when firft his luftre fhould break out upon it; nor could he forbear (for whom does not conftant flattery intoxicate ?) to join fometimes in the mirth of his friends, at the fudden difappearance of those, who, having fhone a while, and drawn the eyes of the publick upon their feeble radiance, were now doomed to fade away before him.

It is natural for a man to catch advantageous notions of the condition which thofe with whom he converfes are ftriving to attain. Polyphilus, in a ramble to London, fell accidentally among the physicians, and was so much pleased with the profpect of turning philofophy to profit, and fo highly delighted with a new theory of fevers which darted into his imagination, and which, after having confidered it a few hours, he found himself able to maintain against all the advocates for the ancient fyftem, that he refolved to apply himself to anatomy, botany, and chemistry, and to leave no part unconquered, either of the animal, mineral, or vegetable kingdoms.

He therefore read authors, conftructed fyftems, and tried experiments; but unhappily, as he was

going to fee a new plant in flower at Chelsea, he met, in croffing Weftminster to take water, the chancellor's coach; he had the curiofity to follow him into the hall, where a remarkable cause happened to be tried, and found himself able to produce fo many arguments, which the lawyers had omitted on both fides, that he determined to quit phyfick for a profeffion in which he found it would be fo easy to excel, and which promised higher honours, and larger profits, without melancholy attendance upon mifery, mean fubmiffion to peevifhnefs, and continual interruption of reft and pleasure.

He immediately took chambers in the Temple, bought a common-place book, and confined himfelf for fome months to the perufal of the ftatutes, year-books, pleadings, and reports; he was a conftant hearer of the courts, and began to put cafes with reasonable accuracy. But he foon difcovered, by confidering the fortune of lawyers, that preferment was not to be got by acuteness, learning, and eloquence. He was perplexed by the abfurdities of attornies, and mifreprefentations made by his clients of their own caufes, by the useless anxiety of one, and the inceffant importunity of another; he began to repent of having devoted himself to a study, which was fo narrow in its comprehenfion that it could never carry his name to any other country, and thought it unworthy of a man of parts to fell his life only for money. The barrennefs of his fellow-ftudents forced him generally into other company at his hours of enter

tainment,

tainment, and among the varieties of conversation through which his curiofity was daily wandering, he, by chance, mingled at a tavern with fome intelligent officers of the army. A man of letters was easily dazzled with the gaiety of their appearance, and foftened into kindness by the politeness of their addrefs; he, therefore, cultivated this new acquaintance, and when he faw how readily they found in every place admiffion and regard, and how familiarly they mingled with every rank and order of men, he began to feel his heart beat for military honours, and wondered how the prejudices of the university should make him fo long infenfible of that ambition, which has fired fo many hearts in every age, and negligent of that calling, which is, above all others, univerfally and invariably illuftrious, and which gives, even to the exterior appearance of its profeffors, a dignity and freedom unknown to the reft of mankind.

These favourable impreffions were made ftill deeper by his converfation with ladies, whofe regard for foldiers he could not obferve without wishing himself one of that happy fraternity, to which the female world feem to have devoted their charms and their kindness. The love of knowledge, which was ftill his predominant inclination, was gratified by the recital of adventures, and accounts of foreign countries; and therefore he concluded that there was no way of life in which all his views could fo completely concenter as in that of a foldier. In the art of war he thought it not difficult to excel, having obferved his new

friends