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No 469

Thursday, Aguft 8.

Detrahere aliquid alteri, & hominem hominis incommode Juum augere commodum, magis eft contra naturam quàm mors, quàm paupertas, quàm dolor, quàm cætera quæ poffunt aut corpori accidere, aut rebus externis.

Tull.

To detract from other men, and turn their disadvantages to our own profit, is more contrary to nature, than death, poverty, or grief, or any thing which can affect our bodies, or external circumftances.

I

AM perfuaded there are few men, of generous principles, who would feek after great places, were it not rather to have an opportunity in their hands of obliging their particular friends, or thofe whom they look upon us as men of worth, than to procure wealth and honour for themfelves. To an honeft mind the best perquifites of a place are the advantages it gives a man of doing good.

Those who are under the great officers of state, and are the inftruments by which they act, have more frequent opportunities for the exercise of compaffion and benevolence, than their fuperiors themselves. These men know every little cafe that is to come before the great man, and if they are poffeffed with honest minds, will confider poverty as a recommendation in the perfon who applies himself to them, and make the juftice of his caufe the most powerful follicitor in his behalf. A man of his temper, when he is in a post of business, becomes a bleffing to the public: He patronizes the orphan and the widow, affifts the friendless, and guides the ignorant: He does not reject the perfon's pretenfions, who does not know how to explain them, or refuse doing a good office for a man because he cannot pay the fee of it. In fhort, tho' he regulates himself in all his proceedings by juftice and equity, he finds a thousand occafions

occafions for all the good-natured offices of generofity and compaffion.

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A man is unfit for fuch a place of truft, who is of a four untractable nature, or has any other paffion that makes him uneafy to those who approach him. Roughnefs of temper is apt to discountenance the timorous or modeft. The proud man difcourages those from approaching him, who are of a mean condition, and who most want his affiftance. The impatient man will not give himself time to be informed of the matter that lies before him. An officer with one or more of these unbecoming qualities, is fometimes looked upon as a proper perfon to keep off impertinence and folicitation from his fuperior; and this is a kind of merit, that can never atone for the injustice which may very often arise from it.

There are two other vicious qualities which render a man very unfit for fuch a place of truft. The first of thefe is a dilatory temper, which commits innumerable cruelties without defign. The maxim which feveral have laid down for a man's conduct in ordinary life, fhould be inviolable with a man in office, never to think of doing that to-morrow which may be done today. A man who defers doing what ought to be done is guilty of injuftice fo long as he defers it. The difpatch of a good office is very often as beneficial to the folicitor as the good office itself. In fhort, if a man compared the inconveniences which another fuffers by his delays, with the trifling motives and advantages which he himself may reap by fuch a delay, he would never be guilty of a fault which very often does an irreparable prejudice to the perfon who depends upon him, and which might be remedied with little trouble to himfelf.

But in the laft place there is no man fo improper to be employed in bufinefs, as he who is in any degree capable of corruption; and such an one is the man, who upon any pretence whatfoever, receives more than what is the ftated and unquestioned fee of his office. Gratifications, tokens of thankfulness, difpatch money, and the like fpecious terms, are the pretences under which corrupti on very frequently fhelters itself. An honest man

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will however look on all thefe methods as unjuftifiable, and will enjoy himself better in a moderate fortune that is gained with honour and reputation, than in an overgrown eftate that is canker'd with the acquifitions of rapine and exaction. Were all our offices difcharged with fuch an inflexible integrity, we should not fee men in all ages, who grow up to exorbitant wealth with the abilities which are to be met with in an ordinary mechanick. I cannot but think that fuch a corruption proceeds chiefly from mens employing the firft that offer themfelves, or those who have the character of fhrewd worldly men, instead of searching out fuch as have had a liberal education, and have been trained up in the studies of knowledge and virtue.

It has been obferved, that men of learning who take to bufinefs, discharge it generally with greater honesty than men of the world. The chief reafon for it I take to be as follows. A man that has spent his youth in reading, has been used to find virtue extolled, and vice ftigmatized. A man that has paft his time in the world, has often feen vice triumphant, and virtue difcountenanc'd. Extortion, rapine, and injustice, which are branded with infamy in books, often give a man a figure in the world; while feveral qualities which are celebrated in authors, as generofity, ingenuity and good-nature, impoverish and ruin him. This cannot but have a proportionabla effect on men, whose tempers and principles are equally good and vicious.

There would be at least this advantage in employing men of learning and parts in bufinefs, that their profperity would fit more gracefully on them, and that we fhould not fee many worthless perfons fhot up into the greatest figures of life.

Vol. VI.

N

Fri ay,

N° 47°

I

Friday, Auguft 29.

Turpe eft difficiles babere nugas,

Et fultus labor eft ineptiarum.

Mart. Epig. 86. 1. 2. v. 9.

'Tis folly only, and defect of fenfe,
Tarns trifles into things of confequence.

Have been very often difappointed of late years, when upon examining the new edition of a claffick author, I have found above half the volume taken up with various readings. When I have expected to meet with a learned note upon a doubtful paffage in a Latin poet, I have only beeu informed, that fuch or fuch ancient manufcripts for an et write an ac, or of fome other notable difcovery of the like importance. Indeed, when a different reading gives us a different fenfe, or a new elegance in an author, the editor does very well in taking notice of it; but when he only entertains us with the feveral ways of fpelling the fame word, and gathers together the various blunders and mistakes of twenty or thirty different tranfcribers, they only take up the time of the learned reader, and puzzle the minds of the ignorant. I have often fancied with myself how enraged an old Latin author would be, fhould he fee the feveral abfurdities in fenfe and grammar, which are imputed to him by fome or other of thefe various readings. In one he speaks nonfenfe; in another makes ufe of a word that was never heard of: And indeed there is fcarce a folecism in writing which the beft author is not guilty of, if we may be at liberty to read him in the words of fome manufcript, which the laborious editor has thought fit to examine in the profecution of his work.

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I queftion not but the ladies and pretty fellows will very curious to understand what it is that I have

been

291 been hitherto talking of; I fhall therefore give them a notion of this practice, by endeavouring to write after the manner of feveral perfons who make an eminent figure in the republick of letters. To this end we will fuppofe that the following fong is an old ode, which I present to the publick in a new edition, with the feveral various readings which I find of it in former editions, and in ancient manufcripts. Those who cannot relish the various readings, will perhaps find their account in the fong, which never before appeared in print.

My love was fickle once and changing, `
Nor e'er would fettle in my heart;
From beauty fill to beauty ranging,
In ev'ry face I found a dart.

'Twas firft a charming shape enflav'd me,
An eye then gave the fatal ftroke:
'Till by her wit Corinna fav'd me,
And all my former fetters broke.

But now a long and lafting anguish
For Belvidera I endure;
Hourly I figh and hourly languish,
Nor hope to find the wonted cure.

For here the falfe unconftant lover,
After a thousand beauties fhorn,
Does new furprifing charms discover,
And finds variety in one.

Various Readings.

Stanza the firft, verfe the firft. And changing ] The and in fome manufcripts is written thus, &, but that in the Cotton library writes it in three diftinct letters.

Verse the second, Nor e'er would.] Aldus reads it ever would; but as this would hurt the metre, we have reftored it to the genuine reading, by obferving that fynærefis which had been neglected by ignorant tran

fcribers.

Ibid. In my heart.] Scaliger and others, on my heart.

N 2

Verfe

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