or amusement. This I believe my readers will be ready to allow, when I assure them, that even this paper, totally unconnected as it may appear to them with any use whatever, is calculated to serve as a precept of morality. I intend it indeed as a striking instance of the folly of not confining one's attention to one particular object; as he who has many objects in view, cannot attend properly to the pursuit of any one of them. Thus there is nothing however inconsiderable, from which morality may not be derived; whether it be from the contemplation of a broomstick, or of the chubby countenances of tomb-stone cherubim. "And for a text" ( or a motto) says the celebrated author of Tristram Shandy-" Cappadocia, Pontus, and Phrygia, will answer as well as any sentence out of any book whatever."

There are however other circumstances still more embarrassing in the choice of a subject. "That there is nothing new under the sun," was the no less true then lamentable complaint of some ancient philosopher. And if this want of novelty obtained in his time, what can a poor authorling of the present day expect? when so many hungry followers have been for ages gathering up every crumb of invention which had fallen from the tables of the ancients, and picking the bones of every disputation on every topic, over and over again, with the most industrious eagerness. It could not fail, I am certain, to excite the commiseration of my readers, were I to relate how many bright ideas and brilliant expressions I have rejected, merely because they have been thought and expressed in the same manner a hundred times before; how often, after wandering in vain to find some untrodden path of original invention, I have been tempted to beat the beaten way of imitatation; and

to take another turn out of the threadbare topics of " virtue and vice," or, " the return of Ulysses."

But though to place common objects in new lights, to cloath familiar ideas in unhacknied language, so as to give an air of novelty to conceptions with which every body is acquainted, be a labour requiring the united efforts of ingenuity and judgement; yet even when this is accomplished, the reader must have a certain coincidence of thought, a sympathy of feeling, and must peruse a paper with the same spirit with which it was written, ere he can enter fully into the ideas, and relish the sentiments of the author. Hence, is it, reader, that you and I, have in all probability frequently differed in opinion, during the course of these my lucubrations. Every paper must infallibly borrow its hue from the humour, or the accident of the moment, in which it is written. Now if it has, as it no doubt often has, so happened, that you have taken up in a merry humour, what I have written in a grave one, or vice versa, that you have been very solemn when I have been disposed to be very witty, it is ten to one, but both my wit and my gravity have been totally lost upon you; that the sprightliest sallies of the former have been unable to derange the phlegmatic primness of your muscular œconomy; and that instead of receiving with due reverence the precepts of the latter, you have been wickedly inclined to treat me and my morality with most unchristian ridicule.

Hearing the other day that a fellow-citizen of mine had exercised his genius in the composition of a tragedy, I took the liberty of enquiring the subject of it, and was informed by him, after considerable hesitation, that it was on no particular subject." This is, I believe, nearly the predica

ment in which my present paper stands; for though I flatter myself I have pointed out in it what a paper ought to be, it has been rather by example than precept; by instancing in an eminent degree what it ought not to be. But as I have gone on thus far without selecting any particular subject, and as I am now too far advanced to dip for a new one, in any of the books which lie upon my table, I shall conclude my paper with a letter, in which my fellow-citizens will find such rules laid down, as will, if well observed, contribute no doubt, to render them good and useful citizens of the greater world. —And I flatter myself, my correspondent will forgive my publishing it with such a view, though contrary to his express desire.

"TO GREGORY GRIFFIN, Esq.'

DEAR SIR,

"Do what you are bid,,-" come when you are called" "speak when you are spoken to"-and "shut the door after you."-Such were the precepts, Mr. Griffin, which in my earlier days, I imbibed from the tongue of my grandmother; such was the path of morality chalked out for me, by following which I was to become an honour to my family, a credit to my country, and Lord Chancellor. For you must know, sir, that from my infancy, this was the des tined goal to which my course of glory was to be directed. As I was the darling of my grandmother, to her was left the sole care and superintendence of my education. For the furtherance therefore of her projects in my favour, it was resolved, when I was eight years old, to send me to Eton. At my setting out her former maxims were reinfor

ced by the addition of a few more equally serviceable exhortations, viz. "to be a good boy"-" mind my book”"never to get on horseback till I could ride"-"nor to venture into the water 'till I could swim"--and above all, ་་ not to make myself sick by the too hasty expenditure of the sixpence, which she bestowed on me at parting."--All these maxims, Mr. Griffin, comprehensive as they are, I have carefully treasured up in my mind; and I write now, merely to ask your opinion of their efficacy to make me an honour to my family, and every thing else which her fond hopes have cut me out for. At any rate, Mr. Griffin, there are, I am confident, many of our fellow-citizens, who have far inferior precepts for their moral conduct than myself; and I must beg therefore, that you will not take advantage of my letter, by betraying my secret assurances of success, to raise me up competitors in my progress to the Woolsack. 'I am, Sir,

'Your's,

B.

No. 33. MONDAY, JULY 2, 1787.

Aliæ, nullis hominum cogentibus, ipsæ,
Sponte sua veniunt.-VIRG.

Some without man's compulsive art,
Shoot forth self-born.

THE

HE philosopher Xanthus, says L'Estrange, going one day, attended by his slave, Æsop, to a garden near the city, was asked by its owner, ( who in course as a classical gardener had an exclusive privilege of philosophizing) why, notwithstanding the high culture and artificial nourishment he applied to his exotics, the native weeds, under the disadvantages of a barren soil, were stronger in their growth, and more luxurious in their vegetation? Xanthus, who though he could not close with his adversary, knew how to parry his thurst, after some reflection turned to Æsop, and with seeming contempt of the question, commanded him to answer it. "All power of vegetation" replied the slave, " is in the hands of nature, who in this instance acts with the usual partiality of a stepmother; depressing the produce of art, and invigorating her own hardy offspring with the profusion of parental fondness.”

What was in the instance of the vegetable world so well applied by this self instructed philosopher, may, with