Baddeley, who furnish fo many agreeable records of many noble families, and are the folace of more than half the toilets in town and country.

But to come more clofely to the chief purport of this letter-It was about a fortnight ago, that I croffed upon you in the Poultry near the fhop-door of your worthy bookfeller: I could not help giving a glance at your looks, and methought there was a morbid fallowness in your complexion and a fickly languor in your eye, that indicated fpecdy diffolution: I watched you for fome time, and as you turned into the fhop remarked the total want of energy in your step. I know whom I am faying this to, and therefore am not afraid of startling you by my obfervations, but if you actually perceive those threatening fymptoms, which I took notice of, it may probably be your wish to lay in fome ftore for a journey you are foon to take. You have always been a friend and customer to me, and there is nobody I fhall more readily serve than yourself: I have long noticed with regret the very little favor you receive from your contemporaries, and fhall gladly contribute to your kinder reception from pofterity; now I flatter myfelf, if you adopt my collection, you will at leaft be celebrated for your fayings, whatever may become of your writings.

As

As for your private hiftory, if I may guess from certain events, which have been reported. to me, you may with a little allowable embellishment make up a decent life of it. It was with great pleasure I heard t'other day, that you was stabbed by a monk in Portugal, broke your limbs in Spain and was poisoned with a fallad at Paris; these with your adventures at sea, your fufferings at Bayonne and the treatment you received from your employers on your return, will be amusing anecdotes, and as it is generally fuppofed you have not amaffed any very great fortune by the plunder of the public, your narrative will be read without raifing any envy in the reader, which will be fo much in your favor. Still your chief dependance muft reft upon the collection I fhall fupply you with, and when the world comes to understand how many excellent things you faid, and how much more wit you had than any of your contemporaries gave you credit for, they will begin to think you had not fair play whilft you was alive, and who knows but they may take it in mind to raise a monument to you by fubfcription amongst other merry fellows of your day?

I am your's,

H. B.

I defire

I defire my correfpondent will accept this fhort but ferious anfwer: If I am fo near the end of life, as he fuppofes, it will behove me to wind it up in another manner from what he fuggefts: I therefore fhall not treat with my friend the haberdasher for his fmall wares.

N' CXIII.

ARK and erroneous as the minds of men

DA

in general were before the appearance of Chrift, no friend to Revelation ever meant to fay, that all the grofs and glaring abfurdities of the heathen fyftem, as vulgarly profeffed, were univerfally adopted, and that no thinking man amongst them entertained better conceptions of God's nature and attributes, jufter notions of his fuperintendance and providence, purer maxims of morality and more elevated expectations of a future ftate, than are to be found in the extravagant accounts of their established theology. No thinking man could feriously fubfcribe his belief

to fuch fabulous and chimerical legends, and indeed it appears that opinions were permitted to pafs without cenfure, very irreconcileable to the popular faith, and great latitude given to speculation in their reafonings upon natural religion; and what can be more gratifying to philanthropy, than to trace thefe efforts of right reason, which redound to the honour of man's nature, and exhibit to our view the human understanding, unaffifted by the lights of revelation and fupported only by it's natural powers, emerging from the darkness of idolatry, and breaking forth into the following defcription of the Supreme Being, which is faithfully tranflated from the fragment of an antient Greek tragic poet?

"Let not mortal corruption mix with your "idea of God, nor think of him as of a corporeal "being, fuch as thyfelf; he is infcrutable to

man, now appearing like fire, implacable in "his anger; now in thick darkness, now in the "flood of waters; now he puts on the terrors of

a ravening beaft, of the thunder, the winds, "the lightning, of conflagrations, of clouds: "Him the feas obey, the favage rocks, the "fprings of fresh water, and the rivers that flow "along their winding channels; the earth her"self stands in awe of him; the high tops of the "mountains, the wide expanfe of the cærulean VOL. IV. "ocean

N

"ocean tremble at the frown of their Lord and "Ruler."

This is a ftrain in the fublime ftile of the Pfalmist, and similar ideas of the Supreme Being may be collected from the remains of various heathen writers.

Antiphanes, the Socratic philofopher, fays, "That God is the refemblance of nothing upon "earth, fo that no conception can be derived "from any effigy or likeness of the Author of "the universe."

Xenophon obferves, "That a Being, who con"trouls and governs all things, muft needs be

great and powerful, but being by his nature "invisible, no man can difcern what form or "fhape he is of."

Thales, being afked to define the Deity, replied that "He was without beginning and with"out end." Being further interrogated, "If "the actions of men could escape the intelliof God?" he answered, "No, nor even

gence

"their thoughts."

Philemon, the comic poet, introduces the following question and answer in a dialogue: "Tell me, I beseech you, what is your conception of God?-As of a Being, who, seeing "all things, is himself unseen."

Menander fays, that "God, the lord and fa

"ther