loose to their own conduct; who, not being chained down by their condition to a regular and stated allotment of their hours, are obliged to find themselves business or diversion, and, having nothing within that can entertain or employ them, are compelled to try all the arts of destroying time.

The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause, is change of place. They are willing to imagine that their pain is the consequence of some local inconvenience, and endeavour to fly from it as children from their shadows, always hoping for some more satisfactory delight from every new scene, and always returning home with disappointment and complaint. Such resemble the expedition of cowards, who, for want of venturing to look behind them, think the enemy perpetually at their heels.

Consolation.

Rambler, vol. 1.

No one ought to remind another of misfortunes of which the sufferer does not complain, and which there are no means proposed of alleviating. We have no right to excite thoughts which necessarily give pain, whenever they return, and which,

perhaps, might not have revived but by ab surd and unseasonable compassion.

Rambler, vol. 2.

Nothing is more offensive to a mind convinced that its distress is without a remedy, and preparing to submit quietly to irresistible calamity, than those petty and con jectured comforts which unskilful officious. Less thinks it virtue to administer.

Notes upon Shakspeare, vol. 5.

Curiosity.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to further progress.

Rambler, vol. 2

There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state between the tediousness of total inactivity and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant them at cnce with ease and novelty, and vitiate them with the luxury of learning. The necessity of doing some

safety of mauling them seems greater than the pleasure. Nor, perhaps, would it much misbeseem them to remember, that, amidst all our triumphs over the nonsensical and the senseless, that we likewise are men, and, as Swift observed to Burnet, "shall soon be among the dead ourselves."

Notes upon Shakspeare, vol. 10.

Critics, like all the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. The bigotry with which editors regard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has been generally remarked. Dryden was known to have written most of his critical dissertations only to recommend the work upon which he then happened to be employed; and Addison is suspected to have denied the expediency of poetical justice, because his own Cato was condemned to perish in a good cause. Rambler, vol. 2.

The works of a writer whose genius can embellish propriety, and whose authority can make error venerable, are proper objects of critical inquisition. To expunge faults where there are no excellences, is a task equally useless with that of the chymist, who employs the arts of separation and

refinement upon ore in which no precious metal is contained, to reward his operations. Rambler, vol. 3

The care of the theatrical critic should be, to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. Action irregular and turbulent may be reclaimed; vociferation vehement and confused may be restrained and modulated; the stalk of the tyrant may become the gait of a man; the yell of inarticulate distress may be reduced to human lamentation. All these faults should be, for a time, overlooked, and afterwards censured with gentleness and candour. But if in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion. Idler, vol. 1.

Convict.

Imprisonment is afflictive, and ignominious death is fearful; but let the convict compare his condition with that which his actions might reasonably have incurred. The robber might have died in the act of violence by lawful resistance. The man