Page images
PDF
EPUB

an action in the eyes of their countrymen, that from thenceforth it was permitted by a law to pronounce public orations at the funeral of a woman in praise of the deceased person, which till that time was peculiar to men. Would our English ladies, instead of sticking on a patch against those of their own country, shew themselves so truly public-spirited as to sacrifice every one her necklace against the common enemy, what decrees ought not to be made in favour of them?

Since I am recollecting upon this subject such passages as occur to my memory out of ancient authors, I cannot omit a sentence in the celebrated funeral oration of Pericles, which he made in honour of those brave Athenians that were slain in a fight with the Lacedemonians *. After having addressed himself to the several ranks and orders of his countrymen, and shewn them how they should behave themselves in the public cause, he turns to the female part of his audience: And as for you,' says he, I shall advise you in very few words. Aspire only to those virtues that are peculiar to your sex; follow your natural modesty, and think it your greatest commendation not to be talked of one way or other.' C.

Thucyd. Hist.' L. II. p. 130, edit. H. Steph. 1588,

N° 82, MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1711.

-Caput dominâ venale sub hast^.

JUV. Sat. iii. 33.

His fortunes ruin'd, and himself a slave.

PASSING under Ludgate* the other day, I heard a voice bawling for charity, which I thought I had somewhere heard before. Coming near to the grate, the prisoner called me by my name, and desired Į would throw something into the box: I was out of countenance for him, and did as he bid me, by putting in half a crown. I went away, reflecting upon the strange constitution of some men, and how meanly they behave themselves in all sorts of conditions. The person who begged of me is now, as I take it, fifty: I was well acquainted with him till about the age of twenty-five; at which time a good estate fell to him by the death of a relation. Upon coming to this unexpected good fortune, he ran into all the extravagancies imaginable; was frequently in drunken disputes, broke drawers' heads, talked and swore loud, was unmannerly to those above him, and insolent to those below him. I could not but remark, that it was the same baseness of spirit which worked in his behaviour in both fortunes: the same little mind was insolent in riches, and shameless in poverty. This accident made me muse upon the circumstance of being in debt in general, and solve in my mind what tempers were most apt to fall into

*Ludgate was a prison for such debtors as were freemen of the city of London; it was taken down in the year 1762, and the prisoners removed to the London workhouse.

this error of life, as well as the misfortune it must needs be to languish under such pressures. As for myself, my natural aversion to that sort of conversation which makes a figure with the generality of mankind, exempts me from any temptations to expence; and all my business lies within a very narrow compass, which is only to give an honest man who takes care of my estate, proper vouchers for his quarterly payments to me, and observe what linen my laundress brings and takes away with her once a week. My steward brings his receipt ready for my signing; and I have a pretty implement with the respective names of shirts, cravats, handkerchiefs and stockings, with proper numbers, to know how to reckon with my laundress. This being almost all the business I have in the world for the care of my own affairs, I am at full leisure to observe upon what others do, with relation to their equipage and

œconomy.

When I walk the street and observe the hurry about me in this town,

I

Where, with like haste, thro' several ways they run;
Some to undo, and some to be undone;'

say, when I behold this vast variety of persons and humours, with the pains they both take for the accomplishment of the ends mentioned in the above verses of Denham*, I cannot much wonder at the endeavour after gain, but am extremely astonished that men can be so insensible of the danger of running into debt. One would think it impossible that a man who is given to contract debts should not know, that his creditor has, from that moment in which he transgresses payment, so much as that demand comes to, in his debtor's honour, liberty, and

*From his poem intituled Cooper's Hill.

fortune. One would think he did not know that his creditor can say the worst thing imaginable of him, to wit, That he is unjust,' without defamation; and can seize his person, without being guilty of an assault. Yet such is the loose and abandoned turn of some men's minds, that they can live under these constant apprehensions, and still go on to increase the cause of them. Can there be a more low and servile condition, than to be ashamed or afraid to see any one man breathing? Yet he that is much in debt, is in that condition with relation to twenty different people. There are indeed circumstances wherein men of honest natures may become liable to debts, by some unadvised behaviour in any great point of their life, or mortgaging a man's honesty as a security for that of another, and the like: but these instances are so particular and circumstantiated, that they cannot come within general considerations. For one such case as one of these, there are ten, where a man, to keep up a farce of retinue and grandeur within his own house, shall shrink at the expectation of surly demands at his doors. The debtor is the creditor's criminal, and all the officers of power and state, whom we behold make so great a figure, are no other than so many persons in authority to make good his charge against him. Human society depends upon his having the vengeance law allots him; and the debtor owes his liberty to his neighbour, as much as the murderer does his life to his prince.

Our gentry are, generally speaking, in debt: and many families have put it into a kind of method of being so from generation to generation. The father mortgages when his son is very young: and the boy is to marry, as soon as he is at age, to redeem it and find portions for his sisters. This, forsooth, is no great

inconvenience to him; for he may wench, keep a public table, or feed dogs, like a worthy English gentleman, till he has out-run half his estate, and leave the same incumbrance upon his first-born, and so on; till one man of more vigour than ordinary goes quite through the estate, or some man of sense comes into it, and scorns to have an estate in partnership, that is to say, liable to the demand or insult of any man living. There is my friend Sir Andrew, though for many years a great and general trader, was never the defendant in a law suit, in all the perplexity of business, and the iniquity of mankind at present; no one had any colour for the least complaint against his dealings with him. This is certainly as uncommon, and in its proportion as laudable in a citizen, as it is in a general never to have suffered a disadvantage in fight. How different from this gentleman is Jack Truepenny, who has been an old acquaintance of Sir Andrew and myself from boys, but could never learn our caution. Jack has a whorish unresisting good-nature, which makes him incapable of having a property in any thing. His fortune, his reputation, his time, and his capacity, are at any man's service that comes first. When he was at school, he was whipped thrice a week for faults he took upon him to excuse others; since he came into the business of the world, he has been arrested twice or thrice a year for debts he has nothing to do with, but as surety for others; and I remember when a friend of his had suffered in the vice of the town, all the physic his friend took was conveyed to him by Jack, and inscribed A bolus or an electuary for Mr. Truepenny.' Jack had a good estate left him, which came to nothing; because he believed all who pretended to demands upon it. This easiness and credulity destroy all the other merit he

« EelmineJätka »