sophers, Stoics, Epicureans, and Platonists, among its defenders; and it is this circumstance of difference, among others, that places our Christian martyrs so high above the utmost reach of Pagan virtue. I have always, however, entertained much humbler opinions of those ancient worthies than it is the fashion to maintain, and have seen in their singularities, their retirement, their misanthropy, and their ostentatious poverty, a pusillanimous evasion of the active duties of life, and a secret love of ease and disincumbrance. Indeed, most of the representations of ancient manners which exist in the writings of their biographers, poets, and historians, exhibit virtue and vice in a sort of masquerade; and their greatest men discover so much equivocality and contradiction in their conduct, that we are at a loss at this day what to pronounce of their general characters. I am strongly, however, upon the whole, inclined to think that the ancients were in general strangers to a real sentiment of manly courage, and that the heroes of Homer, and the philosophers of Laërtius, mistook that for courage, which the wiser system of Christian ethics would call ostentation; and deemed themselves equal with gods, where a Christian would see reason to doubt of his salvation. Although no circumstances under which the act of self-murder is committed can make it at all defensible, yet somewhat more colourable it certainly does appear, where a long and hopeless disorder is spinning out her endurance under an absolute incapacity of discharging any duties of life; when our moral part has already perished, and nothing remains but enough of life to nourish misery. Thus Socrates in the Phædon affirms, that where a man languishes under an incurable disease, he is justi fied in destroying life; and Seneca was of opinion that the way was allowable that leads to liberty, Agamus Deo gratias quod nemo invitus in vitá teneri potest." Pomponius Atticus was a friend to this doctrine, and illustrated it in the manner of his death; and even our own virtuous countryman, Sir Thomas More, in his Eutopia, commends voluntary death when life becomes a burthen. The doctrine, however, is perfectly untenable on sober grounds, and savours of an impatience that derogates from these illustrious characters. If we are placed here for a purpose, we are not judges when that purpose is accomplished; we are ignorant what parts of our lives have the strongest reference to a future state, and is most operative in working out our salvation; and perhaps the example of our last moments may do more good to mankind than the whole tenor of our lives, and is an important bequest to the world and to posterity. No. 87. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18. ΜΑΞ. ΤΥΡ. Εκ διαφόρων σωμάτων ἀθροίσαντες ἓν ὑγιὲς καὶ ἄρτιον ἠρμοσμένον αὐτὸ αὑτῷ ἐξειργάσαντο. Forming one body out of many, they work up, by thus splicing them together, one sound integral Man. Ir appears to be the distinguished boast of the present, over all former ages, and of Britain over all other countries, to exhibit the human intellect in a state of generous rebellion against the tyranny of fortune, spurning the trammels of sex and circumstances, and struggling into splendor from behind the cloud of illiterate indigence. The city of Bristol alone glories in having been delivered of more than one specimen of these untaught teachers: she has dazzled us with a charity-boy successfully conducting a literary imposture, that would have done honour to the ability of the ripest schoolman; and with a milk-maid, in whose favour we are ready to condemn the fable which exposes, under that character, the visions of sanguine schemers. I have been more immediately led to the contemplation of these genuises of the street, by the perusal of an immortal production from the pen of a Tailor, containing a triumphant enumeration of the advantages by which his brotherhood are distinguished from MEN, of whom they are well known to be but fractional parts. It will not be overlooked by the perspicacious reader, how abun dantly this latter circumstance enhances the merit of the piece in question, which has scarcely ever been equalled by the efforts of MAN himself. But no longer to detain the reader from his transports, I shall, without further introduction, lay' before him this extraordinary effusion, which instead of being, as might have been expected, only as one to nine, with respect to the average allotment of poetical fire, will be found to be really in the ratio of nine to one. THE TAILORS' TRIUMPH. I. COME listen! I sing to the lovers of fun, Call us tailors-we're snipp'd into nine in a minute; II. When I've given a sketch of our story, you'll own us I'll eat 'em, if ever those jugglers combine III. I've seen the Sieur Comus embezzle at whist All the tricks, trumps, and honours, before they were mist; Like tailors to want thirty-six for a rubber. Derry down, &c. IV. And how would these conjurors ferret and sweat, To see us pair off by eighteens to piquet! Though our routs might be spar'd, for each corporate elf (A snug party of nine) is a rout in himself. Derry down, &c. V. We're a faint-hearted set-or, to give my advice, For multiply one into nine in our band, And the French-how they'd quake at the multiplicand! Derry down, &c. VI. And he need not care for the chance of a shot, VII. "Twixt us and the ladies what rare goings on! VIII. Should we take to the stage, what immense benefactors And what throng'd tête-à-têtes, wanting two of a score ! IX. Stage coachmen may curse us--but we laugh that win, For the roof never bends, though with snips over-cramm'd. X. If ever we sit to a son of the brush, The luck's all our own, and he's put to the push; |