rows, and storm night-cellars: I beat the watchman, though he bids me good-morrow, abuse the constable, and insult the justice: for these feats I am frequently kicked, beaten, pumped, prosecuted, and imprisoned; but Tim is no flincher: and if he does not get fame, blood! he will deserve it. "I am now writing at a coffee-house, where I am just arrived, after a journey of fifty miles, which I have rode in four hours. I knocked up my blockhead's horse two hours ago. The dog whipped and spurred at such a rate, that I dare say you may track him half the way by the blood; but all would not do. The devil take the hindmost, is always my way of travelling. The moment I dismounted, down dropped Dido, by Jove: and here am I all alive and merry, my old boy! "I'll tell thee what; I was a hellish ass t'other day. I shot a damn'd clean mare through the head, for jumping out of the road to avoid running over an old woman. But the bitch threw me, and I got a cursed slice on the cheek against a flint, which put me in a passion; who could help it, you know? Rot me, I would not have lost her for five hundred old women, with all their brats, and the brats of their brats to the third generation. She was a sweet creature! I would have run her five-and-twenty miles within an hour, for five hundred pounds. But she's gone!-Poor jade! I did love thee, that I did. "Now what you shall do for me, old boy, is this. Help to raise my name a little, d'ye mind: write something in praise of us sprightly pretty fellows. I assure you we take a great deal of pains for fame, and it is hard we should be bilked. I would not trouble you, my dear; but only I fear I have not much time before me to do my own business; for between you and I, both my constitution and estate are damnably out at elbows. I intend to make them spin out to gether as evenly as possible; but if I'll boldly venture on the world unknown; I'll then shoot myself through the head; and so good by't'ye. "Yours, as you serve me, "TIM WILDGOOSE." I should little deserve the notice of a person so illustrious as the hero who honours me with the name of brother, if I should cavil at his principles, or refuse his request. According to the moral philosophy which is now in fashion, and adopted by many of 'the dull dogs who write books,' the gratification of appetite is virtue; and appetite, therefore, I shall allow to be noble, notwithstanding the objections of those who pretend, that whatever be its object, it can be good or ill in no other sense than stature or complexion; and that the voluntary effort only is moral by which appetite is directed or restrained, by which it is brought under the government of reason, and rendered subservient to moral purposes. But with whatever efforts of heroic virtue my correspondent may have laboured to gratify his thirst of glory,' I am afraid he will be disappointed. It is, indeed, true, that like the heroes of antiquity, whom successive generations have honoured with statues and panegyric, he has spent his life in doing mischief to others, without procuring any real good to himself: but he has not done mischief enough: he has not sacked a city or fired a temple; he acts only against individuals in a contracted sphere, and is lost among a crowd of competitors, whose merit can only contribute to their mutual obscurity, as the feats which are perpetually performed by innumerable adventurers, must soon become too common to confer distinction. In behalf of some among these candidates for fame, the legislature has, indeed, thought fit to interpose; and their achievements are with great solemnity rehearsed and recorded in a temple, of which I know not the celestial appellation, but on earth it is called Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey. As the rest are utterly neglected, I cannot think of any expedient to gratify the noble thirst of my correspondent and his compeers, but that of procuring them admission into this class; an attempt in which I do not despair of success, for I think I can demonstrate their right, and I will not suppose it possible that when this is done they will be excluded. Upon the most diligent examination of ancient history and modern panegyric, I find that no action has ever been held honourable in so high a degree, as killing men: this, indeed, is one of the feats which our legislature has thought fit to rescue from oblivion, and reward in Justice Hall: it has also removed an absurd distinction, and, contrary to the practice of pagan antiquity, has comprehended the killers of women, among those who deserve the rewards that have been decreed to homicide. Now he may fairly be considered as a killer, who seduces a young beauty from the fondness of a parent, with whom she enjoys health and peace, the protection of the laws, and the smile of society, to the tyranny of a bawd, and the excesses of a brothel, to disease and distraction, stripes, infamy, and imprisonment; calamities which cannot fail to render her days not only evil but few. It may, perhaps, be alleged, that the woman was not only passive, but that in some sense she may be con sidered as felo de se. for the same may be said of him who fights when he can run away; and yet it has always been deemed more honourable to kill the combatant than the fugitive. This, however, is mere cavil; If this claim then of the Blood be admitted, and I do not see how it can be set aside, I propose that after his remains shall have been rescued from dust and worms, and consecrated in the temple of Hygeia, called Surgeons' Hall, his bones shall be purified by proper lustrations, and erected into a statue: that this statue shall be placed in a niche, with the name of the hero of which it is at once the remains and the monument written over it, among many others of the same rank, in the gallery of a spacious building, to be erected by lottery for that purpose; I propose that this gallery be called the Bloods' Gallery; and, to prevent the labour and expense of emblazoning the achievements of every individual, which would be little more than repeating the same words, that an inscription be placed over the door to this effect: This gallery is sacred to the memory and the remains of the Bloods; heroes who lived in perpetual hostility against themselves and others; who contracted diseases by excess that precluded enjoyment, and who continually perpetrated mischief not in anger but sport; who purchased this distinction at the expense of life; and whose glory would have been equal to Alexander's, if their power had not been less.' No. 99. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1753. -Magnis tamen excidit ausis. But in the glorious enterprise he died. OVID. ADDISON. IT has always been the practice of mankind to judge of actions by the event. The same attempts, conducted in the same manner, but terminated by different success, produce different judgements: they who attain their wishes never want celebrators of their wisdom and their virtue; and they that miscarry are quickly discovered to have been defective not only in mental but in moral qualities. The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded: he that fails in his endeavours after wealth or power, will not long retain either honesty or courage. This species of injustice has so long prevailed in universal practice, that it seems likewise to have infected speculation: so few minds are able to separate the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir William Temple has determined, that he who can deserve the name of a hero, must. not only be virtuous but fortunate.' 6 By this unreasonable distribution of praise and blame, none have suffered oftener than projectors, whose rapidity of imagination and vastness of design raise such envy in their fellow-mortals, that every eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at their distresses: yet even a projector may gain favour by success; and the tongue that was prepared to hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of applause. When Coriolanus, in Shakspeare, deserted to Aufidius, the Volscian servants at first insulted him, even while he stood under the protection of the household gods; but when they saw that the project took effect, and the stranger was seated at the head of the table, one of them very judiciously observes, that he al |