happily amufed, that I was neither heard nor feen, nor was able to give any other proof of my existence than that I put round the glass, and was in my turn permitted to name the toast. My mother indeed endeavoured to comfort me in my vexation, by telling me, that perhaps these showy talkers were hardly able to pay every one his own; that he who has money in his pocket need not care what any man says of him; that, if I minded my trade, the time will come when lawyers and foldiers would be glad to borrow out of my purfe; and that it is fine, when a man can fet his hands to his fides, and fay he is worth forty thousand pounds every day of the year. Thefe and many more fuch confolations and encouragements, I received from my good mother, which, however, did not much allay my unfor having by fome accident heard, that the country aшies defpifed her as a cit, I had there-, fore no longer much reverence for her opinions, but confidered her as one whofe ignorance and prejudice had hurried me, though without ill intentions, into a state of meannefs and ignominy, from which I could not find any poffibility of rising to the rank which my ancestors had always held. C I returned, however, to my master, and bufied myfelf among thread, and filks, and laces, but without my former cheerfulness and alacrity. I had now no longer any felicity in contemplating the exact difpofition of my powdered curls, the equal plaits of my ruffles, or the gloffy blackness of my fhoes; nor heard with my former elevation thofe compliments which ladies fometimes condefcended to pay me upon my readiness in twisting a paper, or counting out out the change. The term of Young man, with which I was fometimes honoured, as I carried a parcel to the door of a coach, tortured my imagination; I grew negligent of my perfon, and fullen in my temper, often mistook the demands of the cuf tomers, treated their caprices and objections with contempt, and received and dismissed them with furly filence. My master was afraid left the shop should fuffer by this change of my behaviour; and, therefore, after fome expoftulations, pofted me in the warehouse, and preserved me from the danger and reproach of desertion, to which my discontent would certainly have urged me, had I continued any longer behind the counter. In the fixth year of my fervitude my brother died of drunken joy, for having run down a fox that had baffled all the packs in the province. I was now heir, and with the hearty consent of my mafter commenced gentleman. The adventures in which my new character engaged me fhall be communicated in another letter, by, Sir, Yours, &c. MISOCAPELUS. NUMB. 117. TUESDAY, April 30, 1751. Οσσαν ἐπ ̓ Οὐλύμπῳ μέμασαν θέμεν· αὐτὰς ἐπ ̓ Οσσῃ HOM. The gods they challenge, and affect the skies : On Offa, Pelion nods with all his wood. POPE. SIR, To the RAMBLER. NOTHING has more retarded the advancement of learning than the difpofition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student often proposes no other reward to himself than praife, he is eafily difcouraged by contempt and infult. He who brings with him into a clamorous multitude the timidity of reclufe fpeculation, and has never hardened his front in publick life, or accustomed his paffions to the viciffitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed converfation, will blush at the ftare of petulant incredulity, and fuffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortreffes of demonftration. The mechanist will be afraid to affert before hardy contradiction, the poffibility of tearing down bulwarks with a filk. worm's thread; and the aftronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed ftars, and the height of the lunar mountains. If I could by any efforts have fhaken off this cowardice, I had not sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the means of communicating to the public the theory of a garret; a fubject which, except fome flight and tranfient strictures, has been hitherto neglected by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure to profecute the various researches in which a nice difcuffion must engage them, or because it requires fuch diverfity of knowledge, and fuch extent of curiofity, as is fcarcely to be found in any fingle intellect or perhaps others forefaw the tumults which would be raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance. That the profeffors of literature generally refide in the highest stories, has been immemorially observed. The wifdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated fituation: why elfe were the Mufes ftationed on Olympus or Parnafus by those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove himself nurfed upon a mountain? or why did the goddeffes, when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great masters of the earlier ages endeavoured to inculcate to pofterity the importance of a garret, which, though they had been long obfcured by the negligence and ignorance of fucceeding times, were well enforced by the celebrated fymbol of Pythagoras, ἀνεμῶν πνεόντων τὴν ἠχω #poσxúv; "when the wind blows, worship its echo." προσκύνει U 3 This This could not but be understood by his disciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Auguftus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without fome allufion to the Pythagorean precept. Quàm juvat immites ventos audire cubantem- How sweet in fleep to pass the careless hours, And it is impoffible not to discover the fondness of Lucretius, an earlier writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty towers of ferene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wife man looks down upon the confufed and erratick state of the world moving below him. Sed nil dulcius eft, bene quàm munita tenere Defpicere unde queas alios, paffimque videre -'Tis fweet thy lab'ring fteps to guide } DRYDEN. The inftitution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is ftill the ufual receptacle of the philofopher and poet; but this, like many ancient customs, |