from which there is the greatest danger, and to stray, if we must ftray, towards thofe parts from whence we may quickly and easily return. Among other oppofite qualities of the mind, which may become dangerous, though in different degrees, I have often had occafion to confider the contrary effects of prefumption and defpondency; of heady confidence, which promises victory without contest, and heartless pufillanimity, which shrinks back from the thought of great undertakings, confounds difficulty with impoffibility, and confiders all advancement towards any new attainment as irreversibly prohibited. Prefumption will be eafily corrected. Every experiment will teach caution, and mifcarriages will hourly fhew, that attempts are not always rewarded with fuccefs. The most precipitate ardour will, in time, be taught the neceffity of methodical gradation and preparatory measures; and the moft daring confidence be convinced that neither merit, nor abilities, can command events. It is the advantage of vehemence and activity, that they are always haftening, to their own reformation; because they incite us to try whether our expectations are well grounded, and therefore detect the deceits which they are apt to occafion. But timidity is a difeafe of the mind more obftinate and fatal; for a man once perfuaded, that any impediment is infuperable, has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before. He can scarcely ftrive with vigour and perfeverance, when he has no hope of gaining the victory; and fince he never will try his ftrength, can can never difcover the unreasonableness of his fears. There is often to be found in men devoted to literature, a kind of intellectual cowardice, which whoever converses much among them, may observe frequently to deprefs the alacrity of enterprise, and, by confequence, to retard the improvement of fcience. They have annexed to every fpecies of knowledge fome chimerical character of terror and inhibition, which they tranfmit, without much reflection, from one to another; they firft fright themfelves, and then propagate the panick to their scholars and acquaintance. One ftudy is inconfiftent with a lively imagination, another with a folid judgment; one is improper in the early parts of life, another requires so much time, that it is not to be attempted at an advanced age; one is dry and contracts the fentiments, another is diffufe and overburdens the memory; one is infufferable to taste and delicacy, and another wears out life in the study of words, and is useless to a wife man, who defires only the knowledge of things. But of all the bugbears by which the Infantes barbati, boys both young and old, have been hitherto frighted from digreffing into new tracts of learning, none has been more mifchievously efficacious than an opinion that every kind of knowledge requires a peculiar genius, or mental conftitution, framed for the reception of fome ideas, and the exclufion of others; and that to him whofe genius is not adapted to the ftudy which he profecutes, all labour shall be vain and fruitlefs, vain as an endeavour to mingle oil and water, or in the language of chemistry, to amalgamate bodies of heterogeneous principles. This opinion we may reasonably suspect to have been propagated, by vanity, beyond the truth. It is natural for those who have raised a reputation by any science, to exalt themselves as endowed by heaven with peculiar powers, or marked out by an extraordinary defignation for their profeffion; and to fright competitors away by representing the difficulties with which they must contend, and the neceffity of qualities which are supposed to be not generally conferred, and which no man can know, but by experience, whether he enjoys. To this difcouragement it may be poffibly anfwered, that fince a genius, whatever it be, is like fire in the flint, only to be produced by collifion with a proper fubject, it is the bufinefs of every man to try whether his faculties may not happily cooperate with his defires; and fince they whofe proficiency he admires, knew their own force only by the event, he needs but engage in the fame undertaking with equal fpirit, and may reasonably hope for equal fuccefs. There is another fpecies of falfe intelligence, given by those who profess to fhew the way to the fummit of knowledge, of equal tendency to depress the mind with false distrust of itself, and weaken it by needlefs folicitude and dejection. When a fcholar whom they defire to animate, confults them at his entrance on some new ftudy, it is common to make flattering reprefentations of its pleasantnefs and facility. Thus they generally attain one of two ends almost equally defirable; they either incite his industry by elevating his hopes, or produce a high opinion of their own abilities, fince they are fupposed to relate only what they have found, and to have proceeded with no lefs eafe than they promife to their followers. The ftudent, inflamed by this encouragement, fets forward in the new path, and proceeds a few steps with great alacrity, but he foon finds afperities and intricacies of which he has not been forewarned, and imagining that none ever were fo entangled or fatigued before him, finks fuddenly into despair, and defifts as from an expedition in which fate oppofes him. Thus his terrors are multiplied by his hopes, and he is defeated without refiftance, because he had no expectation of an enemy. Of these treacherous inftructors, the one deftroys industry, by declaring that induftry is vain, the other by representing it as needlefs; the one cuts away the root of hope, the other raises it only to be blafted. The one confines his pupil to the fhore, by telling him that his wreck is certain, the other fends him to fea, without preparing him for tempests. Falfe hopes and falfe terrors are equally to be avoided. Every man who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompence of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward. NUMB. 26. SATURDAY, June 14, 1750. Ingentes dominos, et clara nomina fama, Each mighty lord, big with a pompous name, SENECA. And near the shore improve the gentle gales. ELPHINSTON. Mr. RAMBLER, T is ufual for men, engaged in the fame pursuits, to be inquifitive after the conduct and fortune of each other; and, therefore, I fuppofe it will not be unpleafing to you, to read an account of the various changes which have happened in part of a life devoted to literature. My narrative will not exhibit any great variety of events, or extraordinary revolutions; but may, perhaps, be not less useful, because I shall relate nothing which is not likely to happen to a thousand others. I was born heir to a very small fortune, and left by my father, whom I cannot remember, to the care of an uncle. He having no children, always treated me as his fon, and finding in me thofe qualities which old men easily discover in sprightly children, when they happen to love them, declared that a genius like mine fhould never be loft for want of cultivation. He therefore placed me, for the ufual time, at |