where they have no rival to fear; and with the luftre which they shall effuse, when nothing can be feen of brighter fplendour. They imagine, while they are preparing for their journey, the admiration with which the rufticks will crowd about them; plan the laws of a new affembly; or contrive to delude provincial ignorance with a fictitious mode. A thoufand pleafing expectations fwarm in the fancy; and all the approaching weeks are filled with diftinctions, honours, and authority. But others, who have lately entered the world, or have yet had no proofs of its inconftancy and defertion, are cut off, by this cruel interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to lofe four months in inactive obfcurity. Many complaints do vexation and defire extort from thofe exiled tyrants of the town, against the inexorable fun, who purfues his course without any regard to love or beauty; and visits either tropick. at the ftated time, whether fhunned or courted,. deprecated or implored. To them who leave the places of publick refort. in the full bloom of reputation, and withdraw from admiration, courtship, fubmiffion, and applause; a rural triumph can give nothing equivalent. The praise of ignorance, and the subjection. of weakness, are little regarded by beauties who have been accustomed to more important conquefts, and more valuable panegyricks. indeed should the powers which have made havock in the theatres, or borne down rivalry in courts, be degraded to a mean attack upon the untravelled heir, or ignoble contest with the ruddy milkmaid.. Nor How How then must four long months be worn away? Four months, in which there will be no routs, no fhews, no ridottos; in which vifits must be re-gulated by the weather, and affemblies will depend upon the moon! The Platonifts imagine, that the future punishment of those who have in this life debased their reason by subjection to their fenfes, and have preferred the grofs gratifications of lewd-nefs and luxury, to the pure and fublime felicity of virtue and contemplation, will arise from the predominance and folicitations of the fame apetites,. in a state which can furnish no means of appeafing them. I cannot but fufpect that this month, bright with funshine, and fragrant with perfumes; this month, which covers the meadow with verdure, and decks the gardens with all the mixtures of colorifick radiance; this month, from which the man of fancy expects new infufions of imagery, and the naturalist new scenes of obfervation; this month will chain down multitudes to the Platonick penance of defire without enjoyment, and hurry them from the highest satisfactions, which they have yet learned to conceive, into a state of hopeless wifhes and pining recollection, where the eye of vanity will look round for admiration to no purpose, and the hand of avarice fhuffle cards in a bower with ineffectual dexterity. From the tediousness of this melancholy fufpenfion of life, I would willingly preferve those who are expofed to it only by inexperience; who want not inclination to wifdom or virtue, though they have been diffipated by negligence, or misled by example; and who would gladly find the way to rational happiness, though it should be neceffary to ftruggle with habit, and abandon fashion. To thefe thefe many arts of spending time might be recommended, which would neither fadden the prefent hour with wearinefs, nor the future with repentance. It would feem impoffible to a folitary fpeculatift, that a human being can want employment. To be born in ignorance with a capacity of knowledge, and to be placed in the midst of a world filled with variety, perpetually preffing upon the fenfes and irritating curiofity, is furely a fuflicient fecurity against the languishment of inattention. Novelty is indeed neceffary to preferve eagerness and ala crity; but art and nature have ftores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces fomething new to him, who has quickened his faculties by diligent obfervation. Some ftudies, for which the country and the fummer afford. peculiar opportunities, I fhall perhaps endeavour to recommend in a future effay; but if there be any apprehenfion not apt to admit unaccustomed ideas, or any attention fo ftubborn and inflexible, as not eafily to comply with new directions, even these obstructions cannot exclude the pleasure of application; for there is a higher and nobler employment, to which all faculties are adapted by him who gave them. The duties of religion, fincerely and regularly performed, will always be fufficient to exalt the meaneft, and to exercise the highest understanding. That mind will never be vacant, which is frequently recalled by stated duties to meditations on eternal interefts: nor can any hour be long, which is spent in obtaining fome new qualification for celestial happiness. IT NUMB. 125. TUESDAY, May 28, 1751. Defcriptas fervare vices, operumque colores, But if, through weakness, or my want of art, HOR. FRANCIS. Tis one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous. Things modified by human understandings, fubject to varieties of complication, and changeable as experience advances knowledge, or accident influences caprice, are fcarcely to be included in any standing form of expreffion, because they are always fuffering fome alteration of their state. Definition is, indeed, not the province of man; every thing is fet above or below our faculties. The works and operations of nature are too great in their extent, or too much diffused in their relations, and the performances of art too inconftant and uncertain, to be reduced to any determinate idea. It is impoffible to imprefs upon our minds an adequate and juft reprefentation of an object so great that we can never take it into our view, or fo mutable that it is always changing under our eye, and has already loft its form while we are labouring to conceive it. Definitions have been no lefs difficult or uncertain in criticisms than in law. Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unfufceptible of limitations, and impatient of reftraint, has always endeavoured to bafile the logician, to perplex the confines of diftinction, and burit the inclofures of regularity. There is therefore fcarcely any fpecies of of writing, of which we can tell what is its effence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces fome innovation, which, when invented and approved, fubverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established. Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for though perhaps they might properly have contented themfelves, with declaring it to be fuch a dramatick reprefentation of human life, as may excite mirth, they have embarraffed their definition with the means by which the comick writers attain their end, without confidering that the various methods of exhilarating their audience, not being limited by nature, cannot be comprised in precept. Thus, fome make comedy a reprefentation of mean, and others of bad men; fome think that its effence confifts in the unimportance, others in the fictitioufnefs of the tranfaction. But any man's reflections will inform him, that every dramatick compofition which raises mirth is comick and that, to raise mirth, it is by no means univerfally neceffary, that the perfonages fhould be either mean or corrupt, nor always requifite, that the action fhould be trivial, nor ever, that it should be fictitious. ; If the two kinds of dramatick poetry had been defined only by their effects upon the mind, fome abfurdities might have been prevented, with which the compofitions of our greatest poets are difgraced, who, for want of fome fettled ideas and accurate diftinctions, have unhappily confounded tragick with comick fentiments. They seem to have thought, that as the meanness of perfonages conftituted comedy, their greatness was fufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necef fary |