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"world according to equity and righteousness, and "execute judgement with an upright heart, give me "wisdom that sitteth by thy throne, and reject me "not from among thy children."

Query JJ.

Supposing the Love of knowledge to be a Motive for the Acquisition of knowledge: is it a powerful Motive?

1. DURING a considerable part of the time in which Savage was employed upon his tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury, he was without lodging and often without meat; nor had he any other conveniences for study, than the fields or the streets allowed him: there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon paper which he had picked up by accidenta.

a Johnson's Life of Savage.

2. For a great part of the life of Erasmus, he was ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom by the hopes of patrons and preferment; hopes which always flattered and always deceived him. He yet found means by unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours, which in the midst of the most restless activity will remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition would have hoped to have read.

Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he is yet more distinguished for his literary attainments. How this proficiency was obtained he sufficiently discovers, by informing us, that the Praise of Folly, one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy; Ne totum illud tempus quo equo fuit insidendum, illiteratis fabulis tereretur, lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horse

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back, should be tattled away without regard to literature."

3. Voltaire, when shut up in the Bastile, and for aught he knew for life, deprived of the means either of writing or reading, arranged and in part executed the project of his Henriade.

4. Brutus, when a soldier under Pompey in the civil wars, employed all his leisure in study; and the very day before the battle of Pharsalia, though it was in the middle of summer and the camp under many privations, spent all his time till the evening in writing an epitome of Polybius.

5. A slave named Juan de Paresa, who belonged to the celebrated Velasquez, was a mulatto, and employed in mixing his master's colours. From pointing the arrows of Apollo he became desirous of trying his strength at the bow. But the casts in India are not separated by a greater distance than the degrees of men in Spain. Paresa was a slave; and to slavery the fine arts were prohibited. In the

& Rambler.

moments of his master's absence Paresa became an accomplished artist. He observed that it was the king's practice, in Velasquez's chamber, to order the pictures that stood with their faces to the walls to be turned; this suggested to Paresa, to reverse one of his own. The king coming into the painting-room ordered his picture to be turned:-Paresa eagerly obeyed. It was not easy to appeal to a better judgement than the king's, or enter upon his trial at a more merciful tribunal. Paresa fell upon his knees, and avowing the guilt of the performance, implored protection against the resentment of his master. " Velasquez," said the king, "Paresa's talents have burst his bonds; you must pardon and restore him to liberty."

6. As Cicero laboured under a very weak constitution, and a natural default in his make of a long and thin neck; it was feared that the bodily exertions required in an orator would endanger his life; as in his pleading he always raised his voice to the highest pitch, and was vehement in his gesture and action.

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