Page images
PDF
EPUB

sour.

milk, they are naturally smooth, yet, like milk, they create particular disgust when they turn No female character is more offensive than a shrew, and the impolite spirit of the English law has provided very rough treatment for termagants, and prepared the severest discipline for the cure of a scold. The greatest reproach on an old maid, that character so much dreaded and ridiculed in the female world, is her ill humour; and crossness is the worst part of a prude. On the contrary, good humour, like the cestus, encircles the fair one with new beauties, and is an antidote to the ravages of age and the small-pox. It is the best part of the portion with a virtuous wife, and a most amiable feature in the face of a queen.

Among our own sex, there is no race of men more apt to indulge a spirit of acrimony, and to remit their natural good-humour, than authors. They come abroad, indeed, with a consummate self-satisfaction and delight; but the least shock given to their vanity taints the mind and converts all their pleasantry to rancour. The flame of emulation often kindles into envy; and these mettlesome gentlemen press so furiously onward to the goal of fame, that they are sometimes driven to the necessity of jostling one

another in the course. For my part, I would rather choose to consider myself on a journey than in a race; and surely it is better and pleasanter to jog on in an easy trot, regardless who is left behind, or who is gone before, than to whip and spur a jaded genius, and, in the heat of furious spleen and blind rage, to be carried perhaps on the wrong side of the post.

[ocr errors]

Good humour is the happiest state of mind for a writer, as well as for any other man. Why should an author suffer every hornet of the press to ruffle his temper, or dip his pen in gall, and prepare wormwood draughts to sweeten the ill blood of a cotemporary? He that causelessly and malignantly traduces another, writes a libel on himself; as the highwayman, who makes an attack upon the road, is, in fact, a greater enemy to himself than to the harmless traveller: such a poor wretch, we know, as well as the rest of the gang, will be brought to justice sooner or later; but nobody cares to have their deaths lie at his own door. Even the muse of

Satire should possess her graces and her productions, like the sweet-briar, should delight and refresh the senses by their fragrance, while they are armed for our annoyance. If we cannot exercise the instruments of wit, we can, at

4

least,lay by the weapons of offence and ill nature; and the candour of the British public will always countenance the faintest efforts to rally the reigning vices and foibles of the age with cheerfulness, pleasantry, and good humour.

THE GENIUS, No 12, Thursday, Nov. 19, 1761.

No. CIII.

Nil prodest quod non læderi possit idem.

Ovid.

No virtue springs in man's immortal soul,
But tends to vice if urged beyond controul.

Ir sometimes happens that men who make the most dangerous deviations from the laws of society and the principles of virtue, in a great measure, owe their crimes to the very benevolence of their hearts; and that, in the midst of all their guilt, we find a dignity of soul which commands our highest admiration.

Frank Leeson was the son of a country gentleman in Ireland, who possessed a little estate of about 300 pounds a year, but who, with that liberality of sentiment so particularly the characteristic of his nation, gave into a hospitality rather beyond the power of his circumstances, and, in promoting the happiness of his friends, too frequently forgot a necessary attention to his own: the consequence may be easily foreseen by the intelligent reader old Mr. Leeson was involved in perpetual difficulties, and was upon the eve of being thrown into prison, when he was saved from a disgrace of that nature by the extraordi

mary piety of his son. Frank to a very excellent understanding, joined a very amiable person; on which account a young lady with an independent fortune of 8000 l. had long beheld him with a favourable eye; but Frank, being attached to another whose beauty and merit were her only recommendations, had hitherto declined to profit by this lady's partiality; however, when he saw there was no other method of saving an infirm father and mother from poverty and bondage, the force of his filial affection got the better of his love; he tore himself from the woman of his soul, and married the eight thousand pounds with this money he paid off all the old gentleman's debts, and entered the world with a degree of reputation, considerably superior to the generality of his acquaintance.

As nothing could separate Frank and his father, the old couple and the young lived for some time in the most perfect state of harmony under the same roof; and the severity of their former situation producing a necessary regulation in their expenses, they were every day rising no less in opulence than in felicity, when an unexpected misfortune left them, in the moment of the utmost security, without shelter and without bread: old Mr. Leeson, finding his health very much impaired, and conceiving a

« PreviousContinue »