month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.' At the end of the fourth book, suspence and attention are excited to the utmost; a combat between Satan and the guardians of Eden is eagerly expected, and curiosity is impatient for the action and the catastrophe: but this horrid fray is prevented, expectation is cut off, and curiosity disappointed, by an expedient which, though applauded by Addison and Pope, and imitated from Homer and Virgil, will be deemed frigid and inartificial, by all who judge from their own sensations, and are not content to echo the decisions of others. The golden balances are held forth, which,' says the poet, are yet seen between Astrea and the Scorpion;' Satan looks up, and perceiving that his scale mounted aloft, departs with the shades of night. To make such a use, at so critical a time, of Libra, a mere imaginary sign of the Zodiac, is scarcely justifiable in a poem founded on religious truth. Among innumerable beauties in the Paradise Lost, I think the most transcendent is the speech of Satan at the beginning of the ninth book; in which his unextinguishable pride and fierce indignation against GOD, and his envy towards Man, are so blended with an involuntary approbation of goodness, and disdain of the meanness and baseness of his present undertaking, as to render it, on account of the propriety of its sentiments and its turns of passion, the most natural, most spirited, and truly dramatic speech, that is perhaps, to be found in any writer whether ancient or modern : and yet Mr. Addison has passed it over, unpraised and unnoticed. If an apology should be deemed necessary for the freedom here used with our inimitable bard, let VOL. XXV. me conclude in the words of Longinus : • Whoever was carefully to collect the blemishes of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and of other celebrated writers, of the same rank, would find they bore not the least proportion to the sublimities and excellencies with which their works abound.' Ꮓ I am, Sir, Your humble servant, PALEOPHILUS. N° 102. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1753. -Quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te What in the conduct of our life appears But, when we have our wish, we wish undone. Juν. DRYDEN. TO THE ADVENTURER.. SIR, I HAVE been for many years a trader in London. My beginning was narrow, and my stock small; I was, therefore, a long time brow-beaten and despised by those, who having more money thought they had more merit than myself. I did not, however, suffer my resentment to instigate me to any arts of supplantation, nor my eagerness of riches to betray me to any indirect methods of gain; I pursued my business with incessant assiduity, sup mean ported by the hope of being one day richer than those who contemned me; and had, upon every annual review of my books, the satisfaction of finding my fortune increased beyond my expectation. In a few years my industry and probity were fully recompensed, my wealth was really great, and my reputation for wealth still greater. I had large warehouses crouded with goods, and considerable sums in the public funds; I was caressed upon the Exchange by the most eminent merchants; became the oracle of the common council; was solicited to engage in all commercial undertakings; was flattered with the hopes of becoming in a short time one of the directors of a wealthy company; and, to complete my mercantile honours, enjoyed the expensive happiness of fining for sheriff. Riches, you know, easily produce riches; when I had arrived to this degree of wealth, I had no longer any obstruction or opposition to fear ; new acquisitions were hourly brought within my reach, and I continued for some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands. At last I resolved to complete the circle of a citizen's prosperity by the purchase of an estate in the country, and to close my life in retirement. From the hour that this design entered my imagi nation, I found the fatigues of my employment every day more oppressive, and persuaded myself that I was no longer equal to perpetual attention, and that my health would soon be destroyed by the torment and distraction of extensive business. I could image to myself no happiness, but in vacant jollity, and uninterrupted leisure; nor entertain my friends with any other topic, than the vexation and uncertainty of trade, and the happiness of rural privacy, But notwithstanding these declarations, I could not at once reconcile myself to the thought of ceasing to get money; and though I was every day inquiring for a purchase, I found some reason for rejecting all that were offered me; and, indeed, had accumulated so many beauties and conveniences in my idea of the spot, where I was finally to be happy, that, perhaps, the world might have been travelled over, without discovery of a place which would not have been defective in some particular. Thus I went on still talking of retirement, and still refusing to retire; my friends began to laugh at my delays, and I grew ashamed to trifle longer with my own inclinations; an estate was at length purchased, I transferred my stock to a prudent young man who had married my daughter, went down into the country, and commenced lord of a spacious manor. Here for some time I found happiness equal to my. expectation. I reformed the old house according to the advice of the best architects, I threw down the walls of the garden, and inclosed it with palisades, planted long avenues of trees, filled a green-house with exotic plants, dug a new canal, and threw the earth into the old moat. The fame of these expensive improvements brought in all the country to see the shew. I entertained my visitors with great liberality, led them round my gardens, shewed them my apartments, laid before them plans for new decorations, and was gratified by the wonder of some and the envy of others. I was envied; but how little can one man judge of the condition of another? The time was now coming, in which affluence and splendor could no longer make me pleased with myself. I had built till the imagination of the architect was ; exhausted; I had added one convenience to another till I knew not what more to wish or to design; I had laid out my gardens, planted my park, and completed my water-works; and what now remained to be done? what, but to look up to turrets, of which when they were once raised I had no farther use, to range over apartments where time was tarnishing the furniture, to stand by the cascade of which I scarcely now perceived the sound, and to watch the growth of woods that must give their shade to a distant gene ration. : In this gloomy inactivity, is every day begun and ended the happiness that I have been so long procuring is now at an end; because it has been procured; I wander from room to room till I am weary of myself; I ride out to a neighbouring hill in the centre of my estate, from whence all my lands lie in prospect round me; I see nothing that I have not seen before, and return home disappointed, though I knew that I had nothing to expect. In my happy days of business I had been accustomed to rise early in the morning; and remember the time when I grieved that the night came so soon upon me, and obliged me for a few hours to shut out affluence and prosperity. I now seldom see the rising sun, but to tell him,' with the fallen angel, how I hate his beams.' I wake from sleep as to languor or imprisonment, and have no employment for the first hour but to consider by what art I shall rid myself of the second. I protract the breakfast as long as I can, because when it is ended I have no call for my attention, till I can with some degree of decency grow impatient for my dinner. If I could dine all my life, I should be happy; I eat not because I am hungry, but because I am idle: but alas ! the time quickly comes when I can eat no longer; and so ill does my constitution second my inclina |