YOUR lordship may think this perhaps a little too fanguine, for one who has loft fo much time already: you may put me in mind, that human life has no fecond fpring, no fecond fummer: you may ask me what I mean by fowing in autumn, and whether I hope to reap in winter? My answer will be, that I think very differently from most men, of the time we have to pass, and the business we have to do in this world. I think we have more of one, and lefs of the other, than is commonly fuppofed. Our want of time, and the shortness of human life, are fome of the principal common-place complaints, which we prefer against the established order of things: they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathetic lamentations of the philofopher; but they are impertinent and impious in both. The man of business despises the man of pleasure, for fquandering his time away; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the

man

man of business, for the fame thing: and yet both concur fuperciliously and abfurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being, for having given them fo little time. The philofopher, who mifpends it very often as much as the others, joins in the fame cry, and authorises this impiety. THEOPHRASTUS thought it extremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he had just learned how to live in it. His mafter ARISTOTLE found fault with nature, for treating man in this refpect werfe than feveral other animals: both very unphilofophically! and I love SENECA the better for his quarrel with the Stagirite on this head. We see, in so many inftances, a juft proportion of things, according to their feveral relations to one another; that philofophy fhould lead us to conclude this proportion preferved, even where we cannot difcern it; inftead of leading us to conclude that it is not preferved where we do not difcern it; or where we think that we fee the contrary.

To

To conclude otherwife, is fhocking prefumption. It is to prefume that the fyftem of the universe would have been more wifely contrived, if creatures of our low rank among intellectual natures had been called to the councils of the Most High; or that the Creator ought to mend his work by the advice of the creature. That life which feems to our felf-love fo fhort, when we compare it with the ideas we frame of eternity, or even with the duration of fome other beings, will appear fufficient, upon a lefs partial view, to all the ends of our creation, and of a just proportion in the fucceffive course of generations. The term itself is long: we render it short; and the want we complain of flows from our profufion, not from our poverty. We are all arrant spendthrifts; fome of us diffipate our eftates on the trifles, fome on the fuperfluities, and then we all complain that we want the neceffaries, of life. The much greatest part never reclaim, but die bankrupts to God VOL. II.

Р

and

and man.

Others reclaim late, and they are apt to imagine, when they make up their accounts and fee how their fund is diminished, that they have not enough remaining to live upon, because they have not the whole. But they deceive themfelves: they were richer than they thought, and they are not yet poor. If they husband well the remainder, it will be found fufficient for all the neceffaries, and for fome of the fuperfluities, and trifles too perhaps, of life: but then the former order of expence must be inverted; and the neceffaries of life must be provided, before they put themselves to any coft for the trifles or fuperfluities.

LET us leave the men of pleasure and of bufinefs, who are often candid enough to own that they throw away their time, and thereby to confefs that they complain of the Supreme Being for no other reason than this, that he has not proportioned his bounty to their extravagance: let us

con

confider the scholar and the philofopher; who, far from owning that he throws any time away, reproves others for doing it: that folemn mortal who abftains from the pleasures, and declines the business of the world, that he may dedicate his whole time to the search of truth, and the improvement of knowledge. When fuch an one complains of the fhortnefs of human life in general, or of his remaining share in particular; might not a man, more reasonable tho less folemn, expoftulate thus with him?

"YOUR complaint is indeed confiftent

"with your practice; but

re

you

would not,

poffibly, renew your complaint if

you

reviewed your practice. Tho reading "makes a scholar; yet every scholar is not

a philofopher, nor every philofopher a "wife man. It coft you twenty years ec to devour all the volumes on one fide of

your library: you came out a great critic

"in Latin and Greek, in the Oriental