virtue. A vice of a more lively nature were a more defirable tyrant than this ruft of the mind, which gives a tincture of its nature to every action of one's life. It were as little hazard to be tost in a storm, as to lie thus perpetually becalmed: And it is to no purpose to have within one the feeds of a thousand good qualities, if we want the vigour and resolution neceffary for the exerting them. Death brings all persons back to an equality; and this image of it, this slumber of the mind, leaves no difference between the greatest genius and the meanest understanding: A faculty of doing things remarkably praife-worthy thus concealed, is of no more use to the owner, than a heap of gold to the man who dares not use it. "To-morrow is still the fatal time when all is to be rectified. To-morrow comes, it goes, and ftill I please myself with the shadow, whilst I lose the reality; unmindful that the prefent time alone is ours, the future is yet unborn, and the past is dead, and can only live (as parents in their children) in the actions it has produced. "The time weliveought not to be computed by the number of years, but by the use which has been made of it; thus 'tis not the extent of ground, but the yearly rent which gives the value to the estate. Wretched and thoughtless creatures, in the only place where covetousness were a virtue, we turn prodigals! Nothing lies upon our hands with fuch uneafiness, nor have there been fo many devices for any one thing, as to make it flide away imperceptibly, and to no purpose. A fhilling shall be hoarded up with care, whilft that which is above the price of an estate, is flung away with difregard and contempt. There is nothing nowa-days so much avoided as a folicitous improvement of every part of time; 'tis a report that must be shunnedas one tenders the name of a wit and a fine genius, and as one fears the dreadful character of a laborious plodder. But notwithstanding this, the greateft wits any age has produced thought far otherwise; for who can think either Socrates or Demosthenes loft any reputation, by continual pains both in overcoming the defects and improving the gifts of nature? All are acquainted with the labour and affiduity with which Tully acquired his eloquence. Seneca in his letters to Lucilius affures him, there was not a day in which he did not either write something, or read and epitomise fome good author; and I remember Pliny in one of his letters, where he gives an account of the various methods he used to fill up every vacancy of time, after feveral employments which he enumerates; fometimes, fays he, I hunt; but even then I carry with me a pocket-book, that whilst my fervants are bufied in difpofing of the nets and other matters, I may be employed in fomething that may be useful to me in my studies; and that if I miss of my game, I may at leaft bring home fome of my own thoughts with me, and not have the mortification of having caught nothing all day. "Thus, Sir, you see how many examples I recal to mind, and what arguments I use with myself, to regain my liberty: But as I am afraid 'tis no ordinary purfuafion that will be of fervice, I shall expect your thoughts on this fubject, with the greatest impatience, especially fince the good will not be confined to me alone, but will be of universal use. For there is no hope of amendment where men are pleased with their ruin, and whilst they think laziness is a defirable character: Whether it be that they like the state itself, or that they think it gives them a new luftre when they do exert themselves, seemingly to be able to do that without labour and application, which others attain to but with the greatest diligence. I am SIR, Your most obliged humble Servant. There are two forts of persons within the confideration of my frontispiece; the first are the mighty body of lingerers, persons who do not indeed employ their time criminally, but are such pretty innocents, who, as the poet says, Waste away In gentle inactivity the day. The others being fomething more vivacious, are fuch as do not only omit to spend their time well, but are in the constant pursuit of criminal fatisfactions. Whatever the divine may think, the case of the first feems to be the most deplorable, as the habit of floth is more invincible than that of vice. The first is preferred even when the man is fully pofieffed of himself, and fubmitted to with conftant deliberation and cool thought. The other we are driven into generally through the heat of wine, or youth, which Mr. Hobbs calls a natural drunkenness; and therefore confequently are more excufable for any errors committed during the deprivation or fufpenfion of our reafon, than the poffeflion of it. The irregular starts of vicious appetites are in time destroyed by the gratificasion of them; but a well-ordered life of floth receives daily ftrength from its continuance. I went (fays Solomon) by the field of the flothful, and the vineyard of the man void of understarding, and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the ftone wall thereof was broken down. To raise the image of this person, the fame author adds, the flotkful man hideth his hand in bis bojom, and it grieveth him to bring it again to his mouth. If there were no future account expected of spending our time, the immediate inconvenience that attends a life of idleness, should of itself be perfuafion enough to the men of fense to avoid it; I say to the men of sense, because there are of these who give into it, and for these chiefly is this paper designed. Arguments drawn from future rewards and punishments, are things too remote for the consideration of stubborn, fanguine youth: They are affected by such only as propose immediate pleasure or pain; as the strongest perfuafive to the children of Ifrael was a land flowing with milk and honey. I believe I may say there is more toil, fatigue, and uneasiness in floth than can be found in any employment a man will put himself upon. When a thoughtful man is once fixed this way, spleen is the neceffary consequence. This directs him instantly to the contemplation of his health or circumstances, which must ever be found extremely bad upon these melancholy inquiries. If he has any common bufiness upon his hands, numberless objections arife, that make the dispatch of it impossible; and he cries out with Solomon, there is a lion in the way, a lion in the streets; that is, there is some difficulty or other, which to his imagination is as invincible as a lion really would be. The man, on the contrary, that applies himself to books, or business, contracts a cheerful confidence in all his undertakings, from the daily improvements of knowledge or fortune, and instead of giving himself up to Shakef. Thick-eye'd musing, and cursed melancholy, has that conftant life in his visage and conversation, which the idle fplenetic man borrows fometimes from the fun-fhine, exercise, or an agreeable friend. A recluse idle fobriety must be attended with more bitter remorse, than the most active debauchery can at any intervals be molested with. The rake, if he is a cautious manager, will allow himself very little time to examine his own conduct, and will bestow as few reflections upon himself, as the lingerer does upon any thing else, unless he has the misfortune to repent: I repeat the misfortune to repent, because I have put the great day of account out of the present cafe, and am now inquiring not whose life is most irreligious, but most inconvenient. A gentleman who has formerly been a very eminent lingerer, and something splenetic, informs me, that in one winter he drank fix hampers of spaw water, several gallons of chalybeate tincture, two hogsheads of bitters at the rate of 60l. an hogshead, laid one hundred and fifty infallible schemes, in every one of which he was disappointed, received a thousand affronts during the north-easterly winds, and in short run through more misery and expence, than the most meritorious bravo could boast of. Another tells us, that he fell into this way at the university, where the youth are apt to be lulled into a VOL. II. R 2 state of such tranquility as prejudices them againft the bustle of that worldly business, for which this part of their education should prepare them. As he could with the utmost secrecy be idle in his own chamber, he fays he was for some years irrecoverably funk, and immersed in the luxury of an easy chair, though at the fame time, in the general opinion, he paffed for a hard student. During this lethargy, he had some intervals of application to books, which rather aggravated, than suspended the painful thoughts of a mif-fpent life. Thus his supposed relief became his punishment, and like the damn'd in Milton, upon their conveyance at certain revolutions from fire to ice, --He felt by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce. When he had a mind to go out, he was so scrupulous as to form fome excuse or other which the idle are ever provided with, and could not fatisfy himself without this ridiculous appearance of justice. Sometimes by his own contrivance and infinuation, the woman who looked after his chamber would convince him of the neceflity of washing his room, or any other matter of the like joyous import, to which he always fubmitted, after having decently opposed it, and made his exit with much seeming reluctance, and inward delight. Thus did he pass the noon of his life in the folitude of a monk, and the gilt of a libertine. He is fince awakened by application out of slumber, has no more spleen than a Dutchman, who, as Sir W. Temple observes, is not delicate or idle enough to fuffer from this enemy, but is always well pleased when be is not ill, always pleased when he is not angry. There is a gentleman I have seen at a coffee-house 'near the place of my abode, who having a pretty good estate and a disinclination to books or business, to secure himself from one of the above-mentioned misfortunes, employs himself with much alacrity in the fol lowing method: Being vehemently disposed to loquacity, he has a person constantly with him, to whom he gives an annual penfion for no other merit but |