No. XXIV.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1787.

To the Author of the Olla Podrida.

Roscia, dic sodes, melior lex, an puerorum est

Nænia.

Hor.

If all the qualities of the mind, or habits of life, which are found to be most adverse to religion, to Christian virtue, and spiritual hope, were to be enumerated, a selfish sordid temper would not appear the last upon the list. It is not intended by these expressions, to point out, in gross terms, a base avarice, a hardened churlish nature, or the disingenuous craft of men devoted to the world; but to expose a disposition better covered from contempt, recommended by careful instruction, and undeservedly respected among men..

We are in haste to withdraw the minds of the young from wild and visionary notions of pleasure and of life: it is better, indeed, to remove such notions prudently and seasonably, than to wait till disappointment snatches them away. Such gay romantic scenes as entertain them in the books they read, such pleasing views of manners and of persons, elevated above the wants of life, its coarser inconveniences, its sullen irksome hours, its attendant troubles and diseases, give but a false draught of the state of man. These broken rays,

perhaps, of lost perfection, cannot, we know, penetrate far into the shades of life; they are the emanations of minds whose early purity is yet untainted by the common ordinary objects and pursuits, the passions and engagements of real life, disfigured as it is. It is true, such views will soon be contradicted by experience, by real images, by daily documents, by repeated and inevitable truth: but reason should not assume too much applause in shaking off these vain and empty notions; though she seem to rise superior to them, she sinks, in fact, too often much below them. The selfish reasoner and worldly monitor, in banishing these phantoms, do not always substitute more noble emulations; they pluck away the weeds and the wild flowers, but they sow tares at last. These are the men who fasten impudence by precept upon honest natures; who rear and educate the baser passions of the heart, endear them by familiar and popular names, point out their advantage, their expedience, and necessity: they chill the warmth of untrammelled and disinterested minds; they plunge themselves and others into selfish sordid habits and opinions, in order to avoid the folly or the inconvenience of those which are childish or imaginary; they put away airy pleasures and speculations, to addict themselves to actual grossness. But can we continue the dreams of fancy to the ends of our lives? no more than we can the games and amusements of children. The hand of experience will pluck away our soft and glittering robes; the sun will vanish. from our landscape; the leaves drop from our shrubs; and we must learn to harden ourselves against the true climate in which we are to live.

Some traces of delight from those fantastic images of youth, remain for recollection; we acknowledge them as true sources of pleasure, but we cannot recur to them. Reason compounds her judgments of different materials: whatever is unnatural cannot please or edify: it cannot please, because the sober mind can only be interested by truth; it cannot edify, because so little of it can apply to ourselves or others. But the knowledge of these truths, as it is applied by selfish and worldly men, does not improve the mind; it rather injures and contracts it. The ridicule thrown upon false pleasures and ideal amusements, leads the way to real sensuality: the fear of being deluded and imposed upon, first abates the warmth of true benevolence, and, at last, excuses churlishness and avarice. What, then, do they gain too often by their boasted experience, by their sagacity and emancipation, but suspicious hearts, narrow minds, gross ideas instead of fanciful ones, real errors, genuine arrogance, and substantial ambition? There are men, indeed, who, under cover of a kind of wisdom, secretly and indirectly deride all eminent degrees of virtue as romantic and impracticable: if you talk to them of pleasures or of hopes, that do not meet the senses, they will turn them into ridicule: if you speak to them of tenderness, of charity, and zeal, they will demonstrate to you how unfit they are for the purposes of life. But whether the juvenile and silly inexperience of a warm imagination be well supplanted by the subsequent inveterate attachments, may be determined by a closer estimate; and if it shall be found that the real, the substantial, and immediate fruition,

so preferred, involves a paradox, is more a notion than the other; deceives us more by universal testimony; hurts us more; is more a shadow; more a dream; and has an issue infinitely worse, a sum of covenanted ills, of woes legitimate and permanent; there will be little scope remaining for complacency, and still less expectation of better habits to succeed.

If we shift only from the pleasures and chimeras of imagination to the pursuits of appetite; if keen desires, or real nakedness, succeed the sports and masquerade of fancy; the change will not be flattering. It is matter rather of disgrace than gratulation, that we are subject, in our chosen pleasures, to the rule and the caprice of present things; the fund and objects of the senses.

But to draw nearer to the mark and end of these reflections-it is clear that such imaginary pursuits, such wild and empty notions, as were first represented, such a temper of mind, occupied in fanciful notions, will be found less abhorrent from what is truly excellent, will be more easily converted into right and lively impressions of what is really desirable and eminent, than that well-compacted, that proud and sensual disposition, which is confirmed by solid enjoyment, such as it is, by the real fruits of worldly prudence, of temporal acquisitions, temporal gratifications, or temporal distinction. The wild conceits and speculations of the young disclose a taste for some superior kinds of pleasure, which is supported by the fancy before it finds a truer foundation-to point out that foundation, is the ultimate design of these remarks; that when the mind outgrows the thoughtless sports of child

hood, or the ideal pageantries of youth, necessity or appetite may neither bend the neck to earth, nor furnish objects to keep up through life an easier chace, which leaves us weary when the day declines, ill repaid by exercise alone, or by a dead and worthless prize.

To kindle in the soul a purer flame, whose radiance may dispel the glooms of life; to give the mind an object adequate to its sublimest scope and comprehension; to cherish regular and reasonable actions, calculated to an end consistent, absolute, and unequivocal; to preclude those blank and cheerless hours which harassed appetite and overworn invention, which disappointment or satiety, which uniformity or sullenness of temper, which the calms or clouds of life, must leave in those who terminate their views upon the present scene, who take new colours from the shifting hues of all things round them, and fluctuate on all their changes; to lift the heart, and raise the front of man--should be the care of tender relatives and skilful guides; of such as cannot but desire, that they, on whom they have entailed their weakness aud their sorrows, should be partners, also, in their hopes on earth, and in their future glories.

To furnish scenes analogous to those which fancy trod before, but opened to the steadfast eyes of reason and of hope, revealed to calm and salutary speculation, and ensured in their reversion; to trace out prospects far more ravishing than all the pages of romance could feign, yet neither inaccessible nor visionary, but properly and truly such as may concern and interest us, and may be our inhe