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Prior says very prettily * :

Against our peace we arm our will:
Amidst our plenty something still
For horses, houses, pictures, planting,
To thee, to me, to him is wanting.
That cruel something unpossest
Corrodes and leavens all the rest.
That something, if we could obtain,
Would soon create a future pain.'

Give me leave to fortify my unlearned reader with another bit of wisdom from Juvenal, by Dryden :

'Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears

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.
p d

VOL. XVI.

and by leisure more so, he began to bewail this
his loss of flesh (though otherwise in perfect health)
as a very melancholy diminution. He became
therefore the reverse of Cæsar, and as
a lean
hungry-looked rascal was the delight of his eyes, a
fat sleek-headed fellow was his abomination. To
support himself as well as he could, he took a ser-
vant, for the very reason every one else would have
refused him, for being in a deep consumption;
and whilst he has compared himself to this creature,
and with a face of infinite humour contemplated
the decay of his body, I have seen the master's
features proportionably rise into a boldness, as
those of his slave sunk and grew languid. It was
his interest therefore not to suffer the too hasty
dissolution of a being, upon which his own, in
some measure, depended. In short the fellow,
by a little too much indulgence, began to look gay
and plump upon his master, who, according to
Horace,

• 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

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