that every petty avocation was found a sufficient plea for continuing me in uncertainty and want. 4. Their kindness was indeed sincere, when they promised they had no intention to deceive; but the same juvenile warmth which kindled their benevolence, gave force in the same proportion to every other passion, and I was forgotten as soon as any new pleasure seized on their attention. 5. Vagrio told me one evening, that all my perplexities should soon be at an end, and desired me, from that instant, to throw upon him all care of my fortune, for a post of considerable value was that day become vacant, and he knew his interest sufficient to procure it in the morning. He desired me to call on him early, that he might be dressed soon enough to wait on the minister before any other application should be made. 6. I came as he appointed, with all the flame of gratitude, and was told by his servant, that having found at his lodgings, when he came home, an acquaintance who was going to travel, he had been persuaded to accompany him to Dover, and that they had taken post-horses two hours before day. 7. I was once very near to preferment by the kindness of Charinus; who at my request, went to beg a place, which he thought me likely to fill with great reputation, and in which I should have many opportunities of promoting his interest in return; and he pleased himself with imagining the mutual benefits that we should confer, and the advances that we should make by our united strength. 8. Away, therefore, he went, equally warm with friendship and ambition, and left me to prepare acknowledgments against his return. At length he came back, and told me that he had met in his way a party going to breakfast in the country, that the ladies importuned him too much to be refused, and that having passed the morning with them, he was come back to dress himself for a ball, to which he was invited for the evening. 9. I have suffered several disappointments from taylors and perriwig-makers, who, by neglecting to perform their work withheld my patrons from court, and once failed of an establishment for life by the delay of a servant, sent to a neighbouring shop to replenish a snuff-box. 10. At last I thought my solicitude at an end, for an office fell into the gift of Hippodamus's father, who being then in the country, could not very speedily fill it, and whose fondness would not have suffered him to refuse his son a less reasonable request. Hippodamus therefore set forward with great expedition, and I expected every hour an account of his success. 11. A long time I waited without any intelligence, but at last received a letter from Newmarket, by which I was informed, that the races were begun, and I knew the vehemence of his passion too well to imagine that he could refuse himself his favourite amusement. 12. You will not wonder that I was at last weary of the patronage of young men, especially as I found them not generally to promise much greater fidelity as they advanced in life; for I observed that what they gained in steadiness, they lost in benevolence, and grew colder to my interest as they became more diligent to promote their own. 13. I was convinced that their liberality was only profuseness, that, as chance directed, they were equally generous to vice and virtue, that they were warm, but because they were thoughtless, and counted the support of a friend only amongst other gratifications of passion. 14. My resolution was now to ingratiate myself with men whose reputation was established, whose high stations enabled them to prefer me, and whose age exempted them from sudden changes of inclination; I was considered as a man of parts, and therefore easily found admission to the table of Hilarius, the celebrated orator, renewed equally for the extent of his knowledge, the elegance of his diction, and the acuteness of his wit. 15. Hilarius received me with an appearance of great satisfaction, produced to me all his friends, and directed to me that part of his discourse in which he most endeavoured to display his imagination. I had now learned my own interest enough to supply him with opportunities for smart-remarks and gay sallies, which I never failed to echo and applaud. 16. Thus I was gaining every hour on his affections, till unfortunately, when the assembly was more splendid than usual, his desire of admiration prompted him to turn raillery upon me. I bore it for some time with great submission, and success encouraged him to redouble his attacks; at last my vanity prevailed over my prudence ; I retorted his irony with such spirit, that Hilarius, unaccustomed to resistance, was disconcerted, and soon found means of convincing ine, that his purpose was not to encourage a rival, but to foster a parasite. 17. I was then taken into the familiarity, of Argurio, a nobleman eminent for judgment and criticism. He had contributed to my reputation, by the praises which he had often bestowed upon my writings, in which he owned that there were proofs of a genius that might raise high to degrees of excellence, when time, or information, had reduced its exuberance. 18. He therefore required me to consult him before the publication of any new performance, and commonly proposed innumerable alterations, without sufficient attention to the general design, or regard to my form of style, and mode of imagination. 19. But these corrections he never failed to press as indispensably necessary, and thought the least delay of compliance an act of rebellion. The pride of an author made this treatment insufferable, and I thought any tyranny easier to be borne than that which took from me the use of my understanding. 20. My next patron was Eutyches the statesman, who was wholly engaged in public affairs, and seemed to have no ambition but to be powerful and rich. I found his favour more permanent than that of the others, for there was a certain price at which it might be bought; he allowed nothing to humour or affection, but was always ready to pay liberally for the service he required. 21. His demands were, indeed, very often such as virtue could not easily consent to gratify; but virtue is not to be consulted when men are to raise their fortunes by favour of the great. His measures were censured; I wrote in his defence, and was recompensed with a place, of which the profits were never received by me without the pangs of remembering that they were the reward of wickedness; a reward which nothing but that necessity, which the consumption of my little estate in these wild pursuits had brought upon me, hindered me from throwing back in the face of my corruptor, 22. At this time my uncle died without a will, and I became heir to a small fortune. I had resolution to throw off the splendour which reproached me to myself, and retire to an humbler state, in which I am now endeavouring to recover the dignity of virtue, and hope to make some reparation for my crimes and follies, by informing others who may be led after the same pageants, that they are about to engage in a course of life, in which they are to purchase, by a thousand miseries, the privilege of repentance. I am, &c. What it is to see the World; the Story of Melissa. 1. THE diligence with which you endeavour to culti vate the knowledge of nature, manners, and life, will per haps incline you to pay some regard to the observations of one who has been taught to know mankind by unwelcome information, and whose opinions are the result, not of solitary conjectures, but of practice and experience. 2. I was born to a large fortune, and bred to the knowledge of those arts which are supposed to accomplish the mind, and adorn the person of a woman. To these attainments, which custom and education almost forced upon me, I added some voluntary acquisitions by the use of books, and the conversation of that species of men whom the ladies generally mention with terror and aversion, under the name of scholars, but whom I have found a harmless and inoffensive order of beings, not so much wiser than ourselves, but that they may receive as well as communicate knowledge, and more inclined to degrade their own character by cowardly submission, than to overbear or oppress us with their learning or their wit. 3. From these men, however, if they are by kind treatment encouraged to talk, something may be gained, which, embellished with elegancy, and softened by modesty, will always add dignity and value to female conversation; and from my acquaintance with the bookish part of the world, I derived many principles of judgment and maxims of prudence, by which I was enabled to draw upon myself the general regard in every place of concourse or pleasure. 4. My opinion was the great rule of approbation, my remarks were remembered by those who desired the second degree of fame, my mein was studied, my dress imitated, my letters were handed from one family to another, and read by those who copied them as sent to themselves; my visits were solicited as honours, and multitudes boasted of an intimacy with Melissa, who had only seen me by accident, whose familiarity had never proceeded beyond the exchange of a compliment, or return of a courtesy. 5. I shall make no scruple of confessing that I was pleased with this universal veneration, because I always considered it as paid to my intrinsic qualities and inseparable merit, and very easily persuaded myself, that fortune had no part in my superiority. : 6. When I looked upon my glass, I saw youth and beauty, with health that might give me reason to hope their continuance when I examined my mind, I found some strength of judgment and fertility of fancy, and was told that every action was grace, and that every accent was persuasion. 7. In this manner my life passed like a continual triumph amidst acclamations, and envy, and courtship, and caresses to please Melissa was the general ambition, and every stratagem of artful flattery was practised upon me. To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them: for they prove at least our power, and shew that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood. 8. But perhaps the flatterer is not often detected, for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when self-love favours the deceit. 9. The number of adorers, and the perpetual distraction of my thoughts by new schemes of pleasures, prevented me from listening to any of those who crowd in multitudes to give girls advice, and keep me unmarried and unengaged to my twenty-seventh year, when, as I was towering in all the pride of uncontested excellency, with a face yet little impaired, and a mind hourly improving," the failure of a fund, in which my money was placed, re |