Prior says very prettily * : Against our peace we arm our will: Give me leave to fortify my unlearned reader with another bit of wisdom from Juvenal, by Dryden : 'Look round the habitable world, how few So well design'd, so luckily begun, But, when we have our wish, we wish undone !' Even the men that are distinguished by, and envied for, their superior good sense and delicacy of taste, are subject to several uneasinesses upon this account, that the men of less penetration are utter strangers to; and every little absurdity ruffles these fine judgments, which would never disturb the peaceful state of the less discerning, I shall end this essay with the following story, There is a gentleman of my acquaintance, of a fortune which may not only be called easy, but superfluous; yet this person has, by a great deal of reflection, found out a method to be as uneasy, as the worst circumstances could have made him. py a free life he had swelled himself above his natural proportion, and by a restrained life had shrunk below it, and being by nature splenetic, * Prior's Poems, vol. i. The Ladle. VOL. XVI. and by leisure more so, he began to bewail this • Invidus alterius macrescit rebus opimis ;' 2 Ep. i. 57. Sickens thro' envy at another's good :' and as he took him only for being in a consumption, by the same way of thinking, he found it absolutely necessary to dismiss him, for not being in one; and has told me since, that he looks upon it as a very difficult matter, to furnish himself with a footman that is not altogether as happy as himself. END OF VOLUME XV 1 |