preffed upon our minds, that virtue is not to be purfued as one of the means to fame, but fame to be accepted as the only recompense which mortals can bestow on virtue; to be accepted with complacence, but not fought with eagerness. Simply to be remembered, is no advantage; it is a privilege which fatire as well as panegyrick can confer, and is not more enjoyed by Titus or Con- . ftantine, than by Timocreon of Rhodes, of whom we only know from his epitaph, that he had eaten many a meal, drank many a flaggon, and uttered many a reproach. Πολλὰ φαγῶν, καὶ πολλὰ πινῶν, καὶ πολλὰ κακ ̓ ειτσών The true fatisfaction which is to be drawn from the consciousness that we fhall fhare the attention of future times, must arife from the hope, that, with our name, our virtues will be propagated; and that those whom we cannot benefit in our lives, may receive instruction from our examples, and incite ment from our renown. I NUMB. 50. SATURDAY, Sept. 8, 1750. Credebant hoc grande nefas, et morte piandum, And had not men the hoary head rever'd, Both must have died, tho' richer skins they wore, JU CREECH, HAVE always thought it the business of thofe who turn their fpeculations upon the living world, to commend the virtues, as well as to expofe the faults of their contemporaries, and to confute a falfe as well as to support a just accusation; not only because it is peculiarly the bufinefs of a monitor to keep his own reputation untainted, left thofe who can once charge him with partiality, fhould indulge themselves afterwards in difbelieving him at pleafure; but because he may find real crimes fufficient to give full employment to caution or repentance, without distracting the mind by needless scruples and vain folicitudes.. There are certain fixed and stated reproaches that one part of mankind has in all ages thrown upon another, which are regularly tranfmitted through continued fucceffions, and which he that has once fuffered them is certain to use with the fame undistinguishing vehemence, when he has changed his ftation, and gained the prefcriptive right of inflicting on others, what he had formerly endured himself. To thefe hereditary imputations, of which no man fees the juftice, till it becomes his intereft to fee it, very little regard is to be fhewn; fince it does not appear that they are produced by ratiocination or enquiry, but received implicitly, or caught by a kind of inftantaneous contagion, and fupported rather by willingness to credit than ability to prove them. It has been always the practice of those who are defirous to believe themfelves made venerable by length of time, to cenfure the new comers into life, for want of refpect to grey hairs and fage experience, for heady confidence in their own understandings, for hafty conclufions upon partial views, for disregard of counfels, which their fathers and grandfires are ready to afford them, and a rebellious impatience of that fubordination to which youth is condemned by nature, as neceffary to its fecurity from evils into which it would be otherwise precipitated by the rafhnefs of paffion, and the blindness of ignorance. Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and infolence of the rifing generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the difcipline and fobriety of the age in which his youth was paffed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, fince confufion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence. It is not fufficiently confidered how much he affumes who dares to claim the privilege of complaining for as every man has, in his own opinion, a full fhare of the miferies of life, he is inclined to confider all clamorous uneafinefs as a : proof proof of impatience rather than of affliction, and to afk, What merit has this man to fhow, by which he has acquired a right to repine at the distributions of nature? Or, why does he imagine that exemptions fhould be granted him from the general condition of man? We find ourselves excited rather to captiousness than pity, and instead of being in hafte to footh his complaints by fympathy and tenderness, we enquire, whether the pain be proportionate to the lamentation; and whether, fuppofing the affliction real, it is not the effect of vice and folly rather than calamity. The queruloufnefs and indignation which is obferved so often to disfigure the last scene of life, naturally leads us to enquiries like these. For furely it will be thought at the first view of things, that if age be thus contemned and ridiculed, infulted and neglected, the crime muft at least be equal on either part. They who have had opportunities of establishing their authority over minds ductile and unrefifting, they who have been the protectors of helpleffness and the inftructors of ignorance, and who yet retain in their own hands the power of wealth and the dignity of command, muft defeat their influence by their own misconduct, and make ufe of all thefe advantages with very little skill, if they cannot fecure to themselves an appearance of refpect, and ward off open mockery and declared contempt. The general ftory of mankind will evince, that lawful and fettled authority is very feldom refifted when it is well employed. Grofs corruption, or evident imbecility, is neceffary to the fuppreffion of that reverence with which the majority of mankind look upon their governors, on thofe whom whom they fee surrounded by splendour and fortified by power. For though men are drawn by their paffions into forgetfulness of invifible reward's and punishments, yet they are easily kept obedient to thofe who have temporal dominion in their hands, till their veneration is diffipated by fuch wickedness and folly as can neither be defended nor concealed. It may, therefore, very reasonably be fufpected that the old draw upon themselves the greatest part of those infults, which they fo much lament, and that age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible. If men imagine that excefs of debauch-ery can be made reverend by time, that knowledge is the confequence of long life however idly and thoughtlessly employed, that priority of birth will supply the want of fteadiness or honefty, can it raife much wonder that their hopes are difappointed, and that they see their pofterity rather willing to trust their own eyes in their progress into life, than enlift themselves under guides who have loft their way? There are, indeed, many truths which time neceffarily and certainly teaches, and which might by those who have learned them from experience, be communicated to their fucceffors at a cheaper rate: but dictates, though liberally enough bestowed, are generally without effect, the teacher gains few profelytes by inftruction which his own behaviour contradicts; and young men mifs the benefit of counsel, because they are not very ready to believe that those who fall below them in practice, can much excel them in theory. Thus the progrefs of knowledge is retarded, the world is kept long in the fame ftate, and every new race is to gain the pru dence |