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

With the same kind of anxious veneration I have for many years been making observations on the lise of Polyphilus, a man whom all his acquaintances have, from his first appearance in the world, seared sor the quickness of his discernment, and admired for the multiplicity of his attainments, but whofe progress in lise, and usesulness to mankind, has been hindered by the superfluity of his knowledge, and the celerity of his mind.

Polyphilus was remarkable, at the school, for surpassing all his companions, without any visible application, and at the university was distinguished equally for his successsul progress as well through the thorny mazes of science, as the flowery path of politer literature, without any strict 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 prosession, and prepare to enter into a public character, every academical eye was fixed upon him; all were curious to enquire, what this universal genius would fix upon for the employment of his lise; and no doubt was made but that he would leave all his contemporaries behind him, and mount to she highest honours of that class in which he should inlist himself, without thofe delays and pauses which must be endured by meaner abilities.

Polyphilus, though by no means insolent or assuming, had been sufficiently encouraged, by uninterrupted success, to place great confidence in his own parts; and was not below his companions in the indulgence of his hopes, and expectations of the astonishment with which the world would be struck, when first his lustre should break out upon it; nor could he forbear (for whom does not constant flattery intoxicate ?) to join sometimes in the mirth of his friends, at the sudden disappearance of thofe, who, having shone a while, and drawn the eyes of the publick upon their seeble radiance, were now doomed to sade away before him.

It is natural for a man to catch advantageous notions of the condition which thofe with whom he converses are striving to attain. Polyphilus, in a ramble to London, sell accidentally among the physicians, and was so much pleased with the prospect of turning philofophy to profit, and so highly delighted with a new theory of severs which darted into his imagination, and which, aster having considered it a sew hours, he found himself able to maintain against all the advocates for the ancient system, that he resolved 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, constructed systems, and tried experiments; but unhappily, as he was 5 going going to see a new plant in flower at Chelsea, he met, in crossing Westminster 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 sound himself able to produce so many arguments, which the lawyers had omitted on both fides, that he determined to quit phyfick for a prosession in which he found it would be so easy to excel, and which promised higher honours, and larger profits, without melancholy attendance upon misery, mean submission to peevissiness, and continual interruption of rest and pleasure.

He immediately took chambers in the Temple, bought a common-place-book, and confined himself for some months to the perusal of the statutes, year-books, pleadings, and reports; he was a constant hearer of the courts, and begun to put cases with reasonable accuracy. But he soon discovered, by considering the fortune of lawyers, that preserment was not to be got by acuteness, learning, and eloquence. He was perplexed by the absurdities of attornies, and misrepresentations made by his clients of their own causes, by the useless anxiety of one, and the incessant importunity of another; he began to repent of having devoted himself to a study, which was so narrow in its comprehension that it could never carry his name to any other country, and thought it unworthy of a man of parts to sell his lise only for money. The barrenness of his sellow-students forced him generally into other company at his hours of entertainment. tainment; and among the varieties of conversation through which his curiofity was daily wandering, he, by chance, mingled at a tavern with some intelligent officers of the army. A man of letters was easily dazzled with the gaiety of their appearance, and softened into kindness by the politeness of their address; he, therefore, cultivated this new acquaintance, and when he saw how readily they found in every place admission and regard, and how samiliarly they mingled with every rank and order of men, he began to seel his heart beat for military honours, and wondered how the prejudices os the university should make him so long insensible of that ambition, which has fired so many hearts in every age, and negligent of that calling, which is, above all others, universally and invariably illustrious, and which gives, even to the exterior appearance of its protestors, a dignity and freedom unknown to the rest of mankind.

These savourable impressions were made still deeper by his conversation with ladies, whofe regard for soldiers he could not observe, without wishing himself one of that happy fraternity, to which the semale world seemed to have devoted their charms and their kindness. The love of knowledge, which was still 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 lise in which all his views could so completely concenter as in that of a soldier. In the art of war he thought it not difficult to excel, having observed his new

friends friends not very much versed in the principles of tacticks or fortification; he theresore studied all the military writers both ancient and modern, and, in a short time, could tell how to have gained every remarkable battle that has been lost from the beginning of the world. He often shewed at table how Alexander should have been checked in his conquests, what was the fatal error at Pharfalia, how Charles of Sweden might have escaped his ruin at Pultowa, and Marlborough might have been made to repent his temerity at Blenheim. He entrenched armies upon paper so that no superiority of numbers could force them, and modelled in clay many impregnable fortresses, on which all the present arts of attack would be exhausted without effect.

Polyphilus, in a short time, obtained a commission; but besore he could rub off the solemnity of a scholar, and gain the true air of military vi* vacity, a war was declared, and forces sent to the continent. Mere Polyphilus unhappily found that study alone would not make a soldier; for being much accustomed to think, he let the sense of danger fink into his mind, and selt at the approach of any action, that terror which a sentence of death would have brought upon him. He faw that, instead of conquering their sears, the endeavour of his gay friends was only to escape them; but hit philofophy chained his mind to its object, and rather loaded him with shackles than surnished him with arms. He, however, suppressed his misery in silence, and passed tlirough the campaign with honour,