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the power of patronizing is but one ingredient in its composition. A patron must be able to read mankind, and to conciliate their affections; he must be so deserving of praise as to be independent of it! yet receive it as if he had no claim, and give it value where it is just, by resisting adulation. He must have that dignity of demeanour which may keep his place in the circle; yet that gentleness which may not overpower the most timid, or overawe the meanest. If he patronizes the arts, he must know and feel them; yet he must speak to the learned as a learner, and often submit the correctness of his taste to the errors of genius. With so many qualifications requisite for a patron, it is not wonderful that so few should arise; or that the bunglers whom we see attempt the part, should so frequently make enemies by offices of friendship, and purchase a lampoon at the price of a panegyric.

There is a sort of female patronage, of which I cannot forbear taking notice, though it be somewhat out of place here. It is considered as of little importance, though I am apt to believe its consequences are sometimes of a very serious nature. In some great houses, my lady, as well as my lord, has a train of followers, who contend for that honour which her intimacy is held to confer, and emulate those manners which her rank and fashion are supposed to sanctify. Let the humanity of such a patroness lead her to beware, lest her patronage be fatal to her favourites. If the glare of grandeur, or the luxuries of wealth, deprive them of the relish of sober enjoyments, if the ease of fashionable behaviour seduce them from the simplicity of purer manners, they will have dearly purchased the friendship which they court, or the notice which they envy. Let such noble persons consider, that to the

young ladies they are pleased to call their friends, those sober pleasures, those untainted manners, are to be the support of celibacy, the dower of marriage, the comfort and happiness of a future life. It were cruel, indeed, if, by any infringement of those manners, any contempt for those pleasures, too easily copied by their inferiors, they should render the little transient distinctions which they bestow in kindness, a source of lasting misery to those who receive them.

To the behaviour of the rich the above observations may apply; wealth, in a commercial country like ours, conferring, in a great measure, the dignity of title or of birth. There are, however, some particular errors into which the possessors of suddenly acquired fortunes are apt to fall, that defeat the ends at which they aim, that disgust where they meant to dazzle, and only create envy where they wish to excite admiration. When Lucullus, at a dinner to which he has invited half-a-dozen of his old acquaintance, shows his sideboard loaded with plate, and brings in seven or eight laced servants to wait at table, I do not reckon the dinner given but sold. I am expected to pay my reckoning as much as in a tavern; only here I am to give my admiration, and there my money; and it is certain that many men, and some very narrow ones too, will sooner part with the last than with the former. I have sometimes seen a high-spirited poor man at Lucullus's table, affronted by the production of Burgundy, and refuse Champagne, because it had the borachio of our landlord's fourscore thousand pounds upon it. This was honest, and Lucullus had not much title to complain; but he knows not how often his Burgundy and Champagne are drank by fellows who tell all the world, next day, of their former

dinners with him at a shilling ordinary, with sixpenny worth of punch, by way of regale, upon holidays.

There is an obligation to complacency, I had almost said humility of manners, which the acquisition of wealth or station lays on every man, though it has often, especially on weak minds, a directly opposite effect. A certain degree of inattention, or even rudeness, which from an equal we may easily pardon, from a superior becomes a serious injury. When my school companion, Marcus, was a plain fellow like myself, I could have waited for him half an hour after the time of appointment, and laughed at his want of an apology when we met. But now that he is become a great man, I count the minutes of my attendance with impatience; and, when he swaggers up to his elbow-chair without an acknowledgment, I hate him for that arrogance which I think he assumes, and almost hate myself for bearing it as I do. The truth is, Marcus was born in the rank, but without the sensibilities of a gentleman, a want which no office in the state, no patent of dignity, can ever supply. If the term were rightly understood, I might confine my admonitions on the subject of this paper to three words: "Be a gentleman." The feelings of this character, which in point of manners is the most respectable of any, will be as immediately hurt by the idea of giving uneasiness by his own behaviour, as of suffering uneasiness from the behaviour of another.

V

No. 92. SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1780.

LOOKING from the window of a house where I was visiting some mornings ago, I observed, on the opposite side of the street, a sign-post, ornamented with some little busts and bronzes, indicating a person to live there, by trade a figure-maker. On remarking to a gentleman who stood near me, that this was a profession I did not recollect having heard of before, my friend, who has a knack of drawing observations from trifles, and, I must confess, is a little inclined to take things on their weak side, replied, with a sarcastic smile, that it was one of the most common in life. While he spoke, a smart young man, who has lately set up a very showy equipage, passed by in his carriage at a brisk trot, and bowed to me, who have the honour of a slight acquaintance with him, with that air of civil consequence which puts one in mind of the notice a man thinks himself entitled to. "That young gentleman," said my friend, " is a figure-maker, and the chariot he drives in is his sign-post. You might trace the brethren of this trade through every street, square, and house in town. Figure-making is common to all ranks, ages, tempers, and situations; there are rich and poor, extravagant and narrow, wise and foolish, witty and ridiculous, eloquent and silent, beautiful and ugly figure-makers. In short, there is scarce anybody such a cipher from nature as not to form some pretensions to making a figure in spite of her.

"The young man who bowed to you is an extravagant figure-maker, more remarkable from being successor to a narrow one. I knew his father well, and have often visited him in the course of money transactions, at his office, as it was called, in the garret-story of a dark, airless house, where he sat, like the genius of Lucre, brooding in his hole over the wealth his parsimony had acquired him. The very ink with which he wrote was adulterated with water, and he delayed mending his pen till the characters it formed were almost illegible. Yet he too had great part of his enjoyment from the opinion of others, and was not insensible to the pleasures of figure-making. I have often seen him in his threadbare brown coat, stop on the street to wait the passing of some of his well-dressed debtors, that he might have the pleasure of insulting them with the intimacy to which their situations entitled him; and I once knew him actually lend a large sum, on terms less advantageous than it was his custom to insist upon, merely because it was a peer who wanted to borrow, and that he had applied in vain to two right honourable relations of immense fortune.

"His son has just the same desire of showing his wealth that the father had; but he takes a very different method of displaying it. Both, however, display, not enjoy, their wealth, and draw equal satisfaction from the consequence derived from it in the opinion of others. The father kept guineas in his coffers which he never used; the son changes, indeed, the species of property, but has just as little the power of using it. He keeps horses in his stable, mistresses in lodgings, and servants in livery, to no better purpose than his father did guineas. He gives dinners, at which he eats made dishes

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