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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 Nepos 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 no man was ever more distinguished by the Deity, whom he blindly worshipped, than the great person I am speaking of, in several occurrences of his life, but particularly in the following one, which I shall relate out of 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 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.

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12. This 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.

which may, by degrees, break from obstruction, and by time and opportunity be brought into act.

4. It may be laid down as an axiom, that it is more easy to take away superfluities than to supply defects; and therefore, he that is culpable, because he has passed the middle point of virtue, is always accounted a fairer object of hope, than he who fails by falling short. The one has all that perfection requires, and more, but the excess may be ezsily retrenched; the other wants the qualities requisite to excellence, and who can tell how he shall obtain them?

5. We are certain that the horse may be taught to keep pace with his fellows, whose fault it is that he leaves them behind. We know that a few strokes of the axe will lop a cedar; but what arts of cultivation can elevate a shrub?

6. To walk with circumspection and steadiness in the right path, at an equal distance between the extremes of error, ought to be the constant endeavour of every reasonable being; nor can I think those teachers of moral wisdom much to be honoured as benefactors to mankind, who are always enlarging upon the difficulty of our duties, and providing rather excuses for vice, than incentives to virtue.

7. But, since to most it will happen often, and to all sometimes, that there will be a deviation towards one side or the other, we ought always to employ our vigilance with most attention on that enemy from which there is the greatest danger, and to stray, if we must stray, towards those parts from whence we may quickly and easily return.

8. Among other opposite qualities of the mind, which may Lecome dangerous, though in different degrees, I have often had occasion to consider the contrary effects of presumption and despondency; of steady confidence, which promises a victory without contest, and heartless pusillanimity, which shrinks back from the thought of great undertakings, confounds difficulty with impossilility, and considers all advancement towards any new attainment, as irreversibly prohibited.

9. Presumption will be easily corrected. Every experiment will teach caution, and miscarriages will hourly shew that attempts are not always rewarded with success. The most precipitate ardour will, in time, be taught the necessity of methodical gradation, and preparatory measures; 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 can scarcely strive with vigour and perseverance, 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 whoever 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 acquaintances.

14. One study is inconsistent 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 the infantes 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 constitucion, 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 language of chemistry, to amalgamate bodies of heterogeneous principles.

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, given by those who profess to shew the way to the summit of knowledge, of equal tendency to depress the mind with false distrust of itself, and weaken it by needless solicitude and dejection. When a scholar whom they desire to animate, consults them at his entrance on some new study, it is common to make flattering representations of its pleasantness and facility.

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 opinion of their own abilities, since they are supposed to relate only what they have found, and to have proceeded with no less ease than they have promised to their followers.

20. The student, enflamed 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 as needless: the one cuts away the root of hope, the other rises it only to be blasted. The one confines 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 excellence, 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.

Fortitude founded upon the fear of God.

GUARDIAN, No. 167. 1. LOOKING over 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 tell 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 conjunction 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 terrified at the news, returns this answer:

Celui que met un frein à la fureur des flots,
Scait aussi des méchans arréter les complots;
Soumis avec respect a sa volunté sainte,

Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, & n'ai point d'autre craînţe, 3.' He who ruleth the raging of the sea, knows also how 'to check the designs 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,

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