of Mr 's affairs as it does of those of most other people, with very rash decision. So generous, so humane, so affectionate a friend, as Mr WW— has long proved himself towards Mr B., is not, I dare assure myself, transformed into the hard and merciless creditor. That business has been misrepresented to you, and is one amongst the daily instances which ought to warn us of the imprudence of lending money, in considerable sums, even to our dearest friends; since, if payment is ever required, it is almost sure to be considered as a cruel hardship; and, what is the strangest thing imaginable, by the public as well as by the individual, who has been, so much in vain, obliged. Mr W. was perfectly right in obtaining every possible security that might oblige his friend to live upon his income, increased to a clear 6001. per ann., by the possession of his new living, and this till he had paid, by instalments, his debt of two thousand pounds to Mr W., contracted full twenty years before; a debt, the payment of which that gentleman, in justice to his own increasing family, ought no longer to neglect. People in debt will not, if they have right principles, allow themselves more than a maintenance till they are free of all obligations. Wanting those self-impelling principles, it is the kindest thing their friends can do to oblige them to be just. Addison lent Sir Richard Steele a few hundreds. Perceiving that he was blazing away in careless profusion, that led to ruin, he remonstrated upon the infatuation; and finding him incorrigible, and with a view to stop a career so dangerous, arrested Sir Richard. It answered the end. The startling prospect of a prison, for he was wholly unable to discharge the demand, awakened him from his dream of dissipation; and Addison withdrew his claim, upon his friend lessening the establishment of his household; and their amity, much to the honour of each, remained undissolved. With all that absurd prejudice which frequently darkened the judgment of Dr Johnson, he violently condemns this action of Addison, in his life of that good man; an action which saved his friend from the ruin into which he was thoughtlessly plunging. That the undiscerning many should, at the time, condemn it as cruel, might have been expected :-from a philosopher and a moralist, we look for wiser decisions ;-but Johnson always greedily caught at every circumstance which wore the least ambiguity of appearance, when he was displaying a whig character to the world, that he might turn to posterity the darkest side of the fact, and thus cast a shadow where he might more fairly have thrown an illumination. As for the anecdote you sent me of Mr HI never had esteem enough for his heart to wonder that sudden prosperity should have produced its usual effect upon narrow minds, and rendered him insolent and overbearing; little appearance as his manners wore of those propensities in his years of at least comparative indigence. Those vices of the heart often lie torpid in the winter of adversity "It is the summer's day brings forth the adder." Adieu ! LETTER LXIII. MR W. NEWTON, THE PEAK MINSTREL. Lichfield, May 10, 1787. No, my friend, it is in vain to expect it—happiness is not of mortal growth. Every situation has its irksome circumstances; its griefs, its anxieties, and its regrets. I have mine-yet is my share of good much more ample than that of many who better merit the bounties of Heaven. It gives me pleasure to hear you acknowledge, that the reflections I made in my last upon your destiny, its pains and its consolations, have softened the first, and added force to the latter. I rejoice that you succeed in the cotton business, to which your talents for inventive mechanism first introduced you. Heaven, who gave you ingenuity of so many species, will, I trust, prosper the industrious effort that virtue inspired, and that wisdom has directed. Successful labour braces the nerves, and is favourable to health and to cheerfulness, even more, perhaps, than Indepen dence herself, in whose train luxury, lassitude, and apathy, are too often found; and they canker all her roses. Mr Cunningham's* sonnet, addressed to your * Sonnet to Mr W. Newton, by the Rev. P. Cunningham. Of late, as Clio left the muses' grove, To place on modest self-taught Edwin's brows A rival fair-one claim'd him as her own; With figur'd ivory planes, that fill'd her hand, And golden compasses, the muses' crown She deck'd ;--and thus she spoke, in accents bland: "Let not the fairy muses' syren train Tempt thee to slight my less engaging lore, self, is not without beauty, though I have some objections to it besides its illegitimacy. The idea is good of the contention between the genius of mechanism and the muse but it is not in the nature of those passions from which contending ladies, however incorporeal their substance, ought not to be supposed exempt, that the former should deck the crown of her rival with the symbol of her own arts. Besides it paints ill; figured ivory planes and golden compasses upon a laurel wreath, form a strange contrast. Fairy is an illjudged epithet for the muse, when her train are termed syren. It makes a jumble of mythological allusion astonishing in a learned and classical writer. The fourth line is one of mine, without any quotation-mark. He took it from an ode which he copied from my manuscript-book some years ago. The five last verses of this sonnet are beautiful. You must get above idle scruples about shewing, or sending to your friends verses written in your own praise. The bard, like the warrior, is privileged to display the trophies he has won: And swell the luckless, disregarded train, Wreck'd on her flowery, but her faithless shore; Be mine thy aims to prosper,-and to shine, And Archimedes' fame, but not his fate, be thine ! ” |