ures; and the most daring confidence be convinced that neither merit, nor abilities, can command events.

10. It is the advantage of vehemence and activity, that they are always hastening 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 occasion. But timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded, that any impediment is insuperable, has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

11. He

ance, when an scarcely strive with vigour and persever

ance, when he has no hope of gaining the victory and since he will never try his strength, can never discover the unreasonableness of his fears.

12. There is often to be found in men devoted to literature, a kind of intellectual cowardice, which w oever converses much among them, may observe frequently to depress the alacrity of enterprize, and by consequence, to retard the improvement of science.

13. They have annexed to every species of knowledge some chimerical character of terror and inhibition, which they transmit, without much reflection, from one to another; they first fright themselves, and then propagate the panic to their scholars and acquaintance.

14. One study is incosistant with a lively imagination, another with a solid 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 sentiments, another is diffuse and over-burdens the memory; one is insufferable to taste and delicacy, and another wears out life in the study of words and is useless to a wise man, who desires only the knowledge of things..

15. But of all the bugbears by which theinfantes barbati boys both young and old, have been hitherto frighted from digressing into new tracts of learning, none has been more mischievously efficacious than an opinion that every kind of knowledge requires a peculiar genius, or mental constitution, framed for the reception of some ideas, and the exclusion of others; and that to him whose genius is not adapted to the study which he prosecutes, all labour shall be vain and fruitless, vain as an endeavour to mingle oil and water, or, in the languge of chemistry, to amalgamate bodies of heterogeneous principies..

16. 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 designation for their profession; and to fright competitors away by representing the difficulties with which they must contend, and the necessity of qualities which are supposed to be not generally conferred, and which no man can know, but by experience, whether he enjoys.~

17. To this discouragement it may possibly be answered, that since a genius, whatever it may be, is like fire in the flint only to be produced by collision with a proper subject, it is the business of every man to try whether his faculties may not happily co-operate with his desires; and since they whose proficiency he admires, knew their own force only by the event, he needs, but engage in the same undertaking, with equal spirit, and may reasonably hope for equal success.

18. There is another species of false intelligence, giv en by those who profess to shew the way to the summit of knowledge, of equal tendency to depress the mind with a false distrust of itself, and weaken it by needless solici tude and dejection. When a scholar whom they desire to animate, consults them at his entrance on some new stu...... dy, it is common to make flattering representations of its pleasantness and facility..

t

19. Thus they generally attain one of the two ends almost equally desirable; they either incite his industry by elevating his hopes, or produce a high opinión of their own abilities, since they are sopposed to relate only whate they have found, and to have proceeded with no less ease than they have promised to their followers.

20. The student inflamed by this encouragement, sets. forward in the new path, and proceeds a few steps with great alacrity; but he soon finds asperities and intricacies of which he has not been forewarned, and imagining that none ever were so entangled or fatigued before him, sinks suddenly into despair, and desists as from an expedition in which fate opposes him. Thus his terrors are multiplied by his hopes, and he is defeated without resistance, because he had no expectation of an enemy.

21. Of these treacherous instructors, the one destroys. industry, by declaring that industry is vain, the other by representing it is needless; the one cuts away the root of

hope, the other raises it only to be blasted.

The one com

fines his pupil to the shore, by telling him that his wreck is certain; the other sends him to sea without preparing him for tempests.

22. False hopes and false 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 ex-. cellence 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.

1.

Fortitude founded upon the Fear of God.

GUARDIAN, No. 177.

LOOKINGover the late edition of Monsieur Boileau's

works, I was very much pleased with the article. which he has added to his notes on the translation of Longinus. He there tells us, that the sublime in writing rises either from the nobleness of the thought, the magnificence, of the words, or the harmonious and lively turn of the phrase, and that the perfect sublime rises from all these three in conjuction together. He produces an instance of this perfect sublime in four verses from the Athalia of Monsieur Racine.

2. When Abner, one of the chief officers of the court, represents to Joad the high priest, that the queen was incensed against him, the high priest, not in the least terri fied at the news, returns this answer;

Celui qui met un frien a la fureur des flots,

Scait aussi des mechans arreter les complots,

Soumis avec respect a sa volente sainte.

Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, & n'ai point d'autre craint. 3. "He who ruleth the raging of the sea, knows alsq how to check the dsigns of the ungodly. I submit myself with reverence to his holy will. O Abner, I fear my God, and I fear none but him. Such a thought gives no less a solemnity to human nature, than it does to good writing.

4. This religious fear, when it is produced by just apprehensions of a divine power, naturally overlooks all human greatness that stands in competition with it, and extinguishes every other terror that can settle itself in the heart of a man: it lessons and contracts the figure of the most exalted person: it disarms the tyrant and executioner, and represents to our minds the most enraged and the

most powerful as altogether harmless and impotent.

5. There is no true fortitude which is not founded upon this fear, as their is no other principle of so settled and fixed a nature. Courage that grows from constitution, very often forsake a man when he has occasion for it; and when it is only a kind of instinct in the soul, brakes out on all occasions, without judgment or discretion. That courage which proceeds from a sense of our duty, and from a fear of offending him that made us, acts always in an uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right rea

son.

6. What can a man fear who takes care in all his actions. to please a Being who is omnipotent; a Being who is able to crush all his adversaries; a Being who can divert any niisfortune from befalling him, or turn any such misfortune to his advantage? The person who lives with this constant and habitual regard to the great superintendant. of the world, is indeed sure that no real evil can come into his lot.

7. Blessings may appear under the shape of pains; losses and disappointments, but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figures. Dangers may threaten him, but he may rest satisfied that they will ei ther not reach him, or if they do, they will be the instru ments of good to him. In short, he may look upon all crosses and accidents, sufferings and afflictions, as means which are made use of to bring him to happiness.

8. This is even the worst of that man's condition whose mind is possessed with the habitual fear of which I am now speaking. But it very often happens, that those which appear evils in our own eyes, appear also as such to him who has human nature under his care, in which case they are certainly averted from the person who has made himself, by this virtue an object of divine favor.

9. Histories are full of instances of this nature, where men of virtue have had extraordinary escapes out of such dangers as have enclosed them, and which have seemed inevitable.

10. There is no example of this kind in Pagan history which more pleases me than that which is recorded in the life of Timoleon. This extraordinary man was famous for referring all his successes to Providence. Cornelius Nepose acquaints us that he had in his house a private chapel in which he used to pay his devotions to the goddess who

represented Providence among the heathens. I think nc man was ever more distinguished by the Deity, whom he blindly worshipped, than the great parson I am speaking of, in several occurrences of his life, but particularly in the following one, which I shall relate out Plutarch.

11. Three persons had entered into a conspiracy to assassinate Timoleon as he was offering up his devotions in a certain temple. In order to do it, they took their several stands in the most convenient places for their purpose. As they were waiting for an opportunity to put their design in execution, a stranger having observed one of the conspirators fell upon him and slew him. Upon which the other two, thinking their plot had been discovered, threw themselves at Timoleon's feet, and confessed the whole

matter.

12. The stranger, upon examination, was found to have understood nothing of the intended assassination, but having several years before had a brother killed by the conspirator, whom he here put to death, and having till now sought in vain for an opportunity of revenge he chanced to meet the murderer in the temple, who had planted himself there for the above mentioned purpose.

13. Plutarch cannot forbear, on this occasion, speaking with a kind of rapture on the schemes of Providence, which in this particular, had so contrived it, that the stranger should for so great a space of time, be debarred the means of doing justice to his brother, till, by the same blow that revenged the death of one innocent man, he preserved the life of another.

14. For my own part, I cannot wonder that a man of Timoleon's religion should have this intrepidity and firmness of mind, or that he should be distinguished by such a deliverance as I have here related.

The Folly of Youthful Extravagance.

RAMBLER, No. 26" 1. is usual for men, engaged in the same pursuits,

other; and therefore, I suppose it will not be unpleasing to you, to read an account of the various changes which have appeared in part of a life devoted to literature. My narrative will not exhibit any great variety of events, or extraordinary revolution; but may perhaps be not less useful, because I shall relate nothing which is not likely to happen to a thousand others.