ruption; it being, in my private opinion, quarrelling with their bread and butter. To balance all this weight of inconveniences, I have nothing but a little vanity to throw into the scale: for to confess a very serious truth, the happiness I enjoy is more owing to my great virtue than my great knowledge; and were it not for my goodwill to mankind, who will not suffer themselves to be instructed by any other hand, I would part with my wisdom at a very easy price, and be as ignorant as the best of them. The value of every acquisition is only to be estimated by its use; and every body knows, that in the commerce with the world, an ounce of cunning is worth a pound of sense. I am sorry to say it, but the whistle, the top, the hobby-horse, and the rareeshow, have administered more delight to my boyish days (for I have been a boy as well as others) than all the treasures of learning and philosophy have done to my riper years. Those pleasures, in time, gave way to others of a higher nature; and the facetious Mr. Punch took his turn to entertain me. The theatres at last attracted all my attention. There, while my imagination was cheated, and real kings and queens, in all the magnificence of royalty, seemed to be exhibiting themselves to my view, my delight was inexpressible. But reason and knowledge soon combining against me, showed me that all was deception; and in conjunction with a demon called Taste, suggested to me at one time the weakness of the performance, and at another the incapacity of the actors, till, in the end, nothing but a Shakspeare and a Garrick had power to entertain me. Thus driven by too much refinement from all the pleasures of youth, I had recourse to those deep and profound studies, that have since made me the object of my own wonder, and the astonishment of mankind. But alas! how ineffectual and unsatisfying are all human acquisitions! The abilities that will for ever make my memory revered, are robbing me of my enjoyment; and besides the evils that I have already enumerated, I am regretting in the best company that I cannot enjoy the solidity of my own thoughts, and am hardly to be persuaded that there is any thing worth reading but what I write myself. A little learning (as Mr. Pope observes) is a dangerous thing. Let me add from experience, that too much is a fatal one. And indeed it seems the peculiar happiness of the present age to chime in with these sentiments; insomuch, that it is hoped and expected of the rising generation, that they will be so trained up, as to suffer no inconveniences from any learning at all. The pleasures of childhood will then be constantly secured to them; and, with ignorance for their guide, they may take their pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave, through a constant road of delight. Sampson was destroyed by his own strength: and the wisdom of Adam Fitz-Adam, like that of Solomon of old, is only vanity and vexation. No. 195. THURSDAY, SEPT. 23, 1756. Generosiùs SIR, Perire quærens, nec muliebriter TO MR. FITZ-ADAM. HOR. To a well-disposed mind, there can be no greater satisfaction than the knowledge that one's labours for the good of the public have been crowned with success. This, sir, is remarkably the case of your paper of September the 9th, on Suicide; a fashionable rage, which I hope you will proceed to expose; and I do not doubt but you will be as famous for rooting out what I may be allowed to call single combat, or the humour of fighting with one's self, as your predecessor, the Tatler, was for exploding the ridiculous custom of duels. The pleasantry of your essay on the reigning modes of voluntary deaths has preserved to a little neighbourhood a very hospitable gentleman, to the poor a good friend, to a very deserving son and daughter a tender parent, and has saved the person himself from a foolish exit. This character, sir, which perhaps from a natural partiality I may have drawn a little too amiably, I take to be my own; and not to trouble you with the history of a man who has nothing remarkable belonging to him, I will only let you into what is so far necessary, as that I am a gentleman of about fifty, have a moderate estate in very good condition, have seen a great deal of the world, and without being weary of it, live chiefly in the country with children whom I love. You will be curious to know what could drive my thoughts to so desperate a resolution, when I tell you farther, that I hate gaming, have buried my wife, and have no one illness. But alas! sir, I am extremely well born: pedigree is my distemper; and having observed how much the mode of self-murder prevails among people of rank, I grew to think that there was no living without killing one's self. I reflected how many of my great ancestors had fallen in battle, by the axe, or in duels, according as the turn of the several ages in which they lived disposed of the nobility; and I thought the descendant of so many heroes must contrive to perish by means as violent and illustrious. What a disgrace, thought I, for the great grandson of Mowbrays, Veres and Beauchamps, to die, in a good old age, of a fever! I blushed whenever I cast mine eyes on our genealogy in the little parlour.-I determined to shoot myself. It is true, no man ever had more reluctance to leave the world; and when I went to clean my pistols, every drop of Mowbray blood in my veins ran as cold as ice. As my constitution is good and hearty, I thought it would be time enough to die suddenly twenty or thirty years hence; but happening, about a month ago, to be near choaked by a fish-bone, I was alarmed for the honour of my family, and have been ever since preparing for death. The letter to be left on my table (which indeed cost me some trouble to compose, as I had no reason to give for my sudden resolution) was written out fair when I read your paper, and from that minute I have changed my mind; and though it should be ever so great a disgrace to my family, I am resolved to live as long and as happily as I can. You will, no doubt, good sir, be encouraged, from this example, to pursue the reformation of this contagious crime. Even in the small district where I live, I am not the only instance of the propensity to such a catastrophe. The lord of the manor, whose fortune, indeed, is much superior to mine, though there is no comparison in the antiquity of our families, has had the very same thought. He is turned of sixty-seven, and is devoured by the stone and gout. In a dreadful fit of the former, as his physician was sitting by his bed-side, on a sudden his lordship ceased roaring, and commanded his relations and chaplain to withdraw, with a composure unusual to him even in his best health; and putting on the greatest appearance of philosophy, or what, if the chaplain had staid, would have been called resignation, he commanded the doctor to tell him, if his case was really desperate. The physician, with a slow profusion of latinized evasions, endeavoured to elude the question, and to give him some glimmerings of hope, that there might be a chance that the extremity of pain would occasion a degree of fever, that might not be mortal in itself, but which, if things did not come to a crisis soon,might help to carry his lordship off.' 'I understand you, by G-d,' says his lordship, with great tranquillity, and a few more oaths: Yes, damn you, you want to kill me with some of your confounded distempers; but I'll tell you what, I only asked you, because, if I can't possibly live I am determined to kill myself; for, rot me! if it shall ever be said that a man of my quality died of a cursed natural death. There, tell Boman to give you your fee, and bid him bring me my pistols. However, the fit abated, and the neighbourhood is still waiting with great impatience to be surprised with an account of his lordship's having shot himself. However, Mr. Fitz-Adam, extensive as the service is which you may render to the community by abolishing this heathenish practice, I think in some respects it is to be treated with tenderness; in one |