By these means he is generous without impoverishing himself, and enjoys his estate by making it the property of others. There are few men so cramped in their private affairs, who may not be charitable after this manner, without any disadvantage to themselves, or prejudice to their families. It is but sometimes sacrificing a diversion or convenience to the poor, and turning the usual course of our expenses into a better channel. This is, I think, not only the most prudent and convenient, but the most meritorious piece of charity, which we can put in practice. By this method we in some measure share the necessities of the poor at the same time that we relieve them, and make ourselves not only their patrons, but their fellow-sufferers. Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of his Religio Medici, in which he describes his charity in several heroic instances, and with a noble heat of sentiments mentions that verse in the Proverbs of Solomon, "He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord: "There is more rhetoric in that one sentence," says he, "than in a library of sermons; and indeed if those sentences were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome." This passage of Scripture is indeed wonderfully persuasive; but I think the same thought is carried much further in the New Testament, where our Saviour tells us in the most pathetic manner, that he shall hereafter regard the clothing of the naked, the feeding of the hungry, and the visiting of the imprisoned, as offices done to himself, and reward them accordingly. Pursuant to those passages in Holy Scripture, I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose: "What I spent I lost what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me." : Since I am thus insensibly engaged in sacred writ, I cannot forbear making an extract of several passages which I have always read with great delight in the book of Job. It the account which that holy man gives of his behaviour in the days of his prosperity, and if considered only as a hu man composition, is a finer picture of a charitable and goodnatured man than is to be met with in any other author. "Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me: when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness: when the Almighty was yet with me: when my children were about me: when I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured out rivers of oil. "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me. Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame; I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not, I searched out. Did I not weep for him that was in trouble, was not my soul grieved for the poor? Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity. If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant when they contended with me; what then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb? If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof: if I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or any poor without covering: if his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep: if I have lift up my hand against the fatherless when I saw my help in the gate; then let mine arm fall from my shoulderblade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lift up myself when evil found him: (neither have I suffered my mouth to sin, by wishing a curse to his soul.) The stranger did not lodge in the street; but I opened my doors to the traveller. If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain: if I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley." No. 179. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 Centuriæ seniorum agitant expertia frugis: Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo. HOR. I MAY cast my readers under two general divisions, the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of my disciples, who require speculations of wit and humour; the others are those of a more solemn and sober turn, who find no pleasure but in papers of morality and sound sense. The former call everything that is serious stupid; the latter look upon everything as impertinent that is ludicrous. Were I always grave, one half of my readers would fall off from me were I always merry, I should lose the other. I make it therefore my endeavour to find out entertainments for both kinds, and by that means perhaps consult the good of both, more than I should do did I always write to the particular taste of either. As they neither of them know what I proceed upon, the sprightly reader, who takes up my paper in order to be diverted, very often finds himself engaged unawares in a serious and profitable course of thinking; as, on the contrary, the thoughtful man, who perhaps may hope to find something solid, and full of deep reflection, is very often insensibly betrayed into a fit of mirth. In a word, the reader sits down to my entertainment without knowing his bill of fare, and has therefore at least the pleasure of hoping there may be a dish to his palate. I must confess, were I left to myself, I would rather aim at instructing than diverting; but if we will be useful to the world, we must take it as we find it. Authors of professed severity discourage the looser part of mankind from having anything to do with their writings. A man must have virtue in him, before he will enter upon the reading of a Seneca or an Epictetus. The very title of a moral treatise has something in it austere and shocking to the careless and inconsiderate. For this reason several unthinking persons fall in my way, who would give no attention to lectures delivered with a religious seriousness or a philosophic gravity. They are insnared into sentiments of wisdom and virtue when they do not think of it; and if by that means they arrive only at such a degree of consideration as may dispose them to listen to more studied and elaborate discourses, I shall not think my speculations useless. I might likewise observe, that the gloominess in which sometimes the minds of the best men are involved, very often stands in need of such little incitements to mirth and laughter as are apt to disperse melancholy, and put our faculties in good humour. To which some will add, that the British climate more than any other makes entertainments of this nature in a manner necessary. If what I have here said does not recommend, it will at least excuse, the variety of my speculations. I would not willingly laugh but in order to instruct, or if I sometimes fail in this point, when my mirth ceases to be instructive, it shall never cease to be innocent. A scrupulous conduct in this particular has, perhaps, more merit in it than the gener ality of readers imagine: did they know how many thoughts occur in a point of humour, which a discreet author in modesty suppresses; how many strokes of raillery present themselves, which could not fail to please the ordinary taste of mankind, but are stifled in their birth by reason of some remote tendency which they carry in them to corrupt the minds of those who read them; did they know how many glances of ill-nature are industriously avoided for fear of doing injury to the reputation of another; they would be apt to think kindly of those writers who endeavour to make themselves diverting without being immoral. One may apply to these authors that passage in Waller, Poets lose half the praise they would have got, Were it but known what they discreetly blot. As nothing is more easy than to be a wit with all the abovementioned liberties, it requires some genius and invention to appear such without them. What I have here said is not only in regard to the public, but with an eye to my particular correspondent, who has sent me the following letter, which I have castrated in some places upon these considerations. "SIR, Having lately seen your discourse upon a match of grinning, I cannot forbear giving you an account of a whist ling match, which, with many others, I was entertained with about three years since at the Bath. The prize was a guines, to be conferred upon the ablest whistler, that is, on him who could whistle clearest, and go through his tune without laughing, to which at the same time he was provoked by the antic postures of a Merry-Andrew, who was to stand upon the stage and play his tricks in the eye of the performer. There were three competitors for the guinea. The first was a ploughman of a very promising aspect; his features were steady, and his muscles composed in so inflexible a stupidity, that upon his first appearance every one gave the guinea for lost. The pickled-herring, however, found the way to shake him, for upon his whistling a country jig, this unlucky wag danced to it with such variety of distortions and grimaces, that the countryman could not forbear smiling upon him, and by that means spoiled his whistle and lost the prize. The next that mounted the stage was an under-citizen of the Bath, a person remarkable among the inferior people of that place for his great wisdom and his broad band. He contracted his mouth with much gravity, and, that he might dispose his mind to be more serious than ordinary, begun the tune of the Children in the Wood,' and went through part of it with good success; when on a sudden the wit at his elbow, who had appeared wonderfully grave and attentive for some time, gave him a touch upon the left shoulder, and stared him in the face with so bewitching a grin, that the whistler relaxed his fibres into a kind of simper, and at length burst out into an open laugh. The third who entered the lists was a foot-man, who, in defiance of the Merry-Andrew and all his arts, whistled a Scotch tune and an Italian sonata, with so settled a countenance, that he bore away the prize, to the great admiration of some hundreds of persons, who, as well as myself, were present at this trial of skill. Now, sir, I humbly conceive, whatever you have determined of the grinners, the whistlers ought to be encouraged, not only as their art is practised without distortion, but as it improves country music, promotes gravity, and teaches ordinary people to keep their countenances, if they see anything ridiculous in their betters; besides that, it seems an entertainment very particularly adapted to the Bath, as it is usual for a rider to whistle to his horse when he would make his waters pass. POSTSCRIPT. "I am, sir," &c. "After you have despatched these two important points |