as by our os sublime (our erected faces) to lift the dignity of our form above them.

Notwithstanding all I have said, I am afraid there is an absolute power in what is simply called our constitution, that will never admit of other rules for happ'ness than her own; from which (be we never so wise or weak) without divine assistance, we only can receive it; so that all this my parade and grimace of philosophy has been only making a mighty merit of following my own inclination. A very natural vanity! though it is some sort of satisfaction to know it does not impose upon me. Vanity again! However, think it what you will that has drawn me into this copious digression, it is now high time to drop it. I shall therefore in my next chapter return to my school, from whence I fear I have too long been truant.

CHAPTER II.

He that writes of himself, not easily tired.-Boys may give men lessons.--The author's preferment at school attended with misfortunes.-The danger of merit among equals.-Of satirists and backbiters.-What effect they have had upon the author. -Stanzas published by himself against himself.

It often makes me smile to think how contentedly I have set myself down to write my own life; nay, and with less concern for what may be said of it than I should feel, were I to do the same for a deceased acquaintance. This you will easily account for, when you consider that nothing gives a coxcomb more delight than when you suffer him to talk of himself; which sweet liberty I here enjoy for a whole volume together :a privilege which neither could be allowed me, nor would become me to take in the company I am generally admitted to; but here, when I have all the talk to myself, and have nobody to interrupt or contradict me, sure, to say whatever I have a mind other people

should know of me, is a pleasure which none but authors as vain as myself can conceive.-But to my history.

However little worth notice the life of a schoolboy may be supposed to contain, yet as the passions of men and children have much the same motives, and differ very little in their effects, unless where the elder experience may be able to conceal them,-as therefore what arises from the boy may possibly be a lesson to the man, I shall venture to relate a fact or two that happened while I was still at school.

In February, 1684-5, died king Charles II, who being the only king I had ever seen, I remember (young as I was) his death made a strong impression upon me, as it drew tears from the eyes of multitudes who looked no further into him than I did: but it was then a sort of schooldoctrine to regard our monarch as a deity, as in the former reign it was to insist he was accountable to this world, as well as to that above him. But what perhaps gave king Charles II this peculiar possession of so many hearts, was his affable and easy manner in conversing; which is a quality that goes farther with the greater part of mankind than many higher virtues which in a prince might more immediately regard the public prosperity. Even his indolent amusement of playing with his dogs, and feeding his ducks, in St James's park, (which I have seen him do,) made the common people adore him, and consequently overlook in him what, in a prince of a different temper, they might have been out of humour at.

I cannot help remembering one more particular in those times, though it be quite foreign to what will follow. I was carried by my father to the chapel in Whitehall, where I saw the king, and his royal brother, the then duke of York, with him in the closet, and present during the whole divine service. Such dispensation, it seems, for his interest, had that unhappy prince from his real religion, to assist at another, to which his heart was so utterly averse. I now proceed to the facts I promised to speak of.

King Charles's death was judged by our schoolmaster a proper subject to lead the form I was in into a higher kind of exercise; he therefore enjoined us, severally to make his funeral oration: this sort of task, so entirely new to us all, the boys received with astonishment, as a work above their capacity; and though the master persisted in his command, they one and all, except myself, resolved to decline it. But I, sir, who was ever giddily forward, and thoughtless of consequences, set myself roundly to work, and got through it as well as I could. I remember to this hour, that single topic of his affability (which made me mention it before) was the chief motive that warmed me into the undertaking; and to show how very childish a notion I had of his character at that time, I raised his humanity, and love of those who served him, to such height, that I imputed his death to the shock he received from the lord Arlington's being at the point of death about a week before him. This oration, such as it was, I produced the next morning: all the other boys pleaded their inability, which the master, taking rather as a mark of their modesty than their idleness, only seemed to punish by setting me at the head of the form: a preferment dearly bought! Much happier had I been to have sunk my performance in the general modesty of declining it. A most uncomfortable life I led among them for many a day after! I was so jeered, laughed at, and hated, as a pragmatical bastard (schoolboys' language) who had betrayed the whole form, that scarce any of them would keep me company; and though it so far advanced me into the master's favour, that he would often take me from the school to give me an airing with him on horseback, while they were left to their lessons, you may be sure such envied happiness did not increase their goodwill to me. Notwithstanding which, my stupidity could take no warning from their treatment. An accident of the same nature happened soon after, that might have frightened a boy of a meek spirit from attempting any thing above the lowest capacity. On the 23d of April following, being the

coronation day of the new king, the school petitioned the master for leave to play; to which he agreed, provided any of the boys would produce an English ode upon that occasion. The very word ode, I know, makes you smile already; and so it does me; not only because it still makes so many poor devils turn wits upon it, but from a more agreeable motive-from a reflection of how little I then thought that half a century afterwards I should be called upon twice a year, by my post, to make the same kind of oblations to an unexceptionable prince, the serene happiness of whose reign my halting rhymes are still so unequal to. This, I own, is vanity without disguise; but hæc olim meminisse juvat: the remembrance of the miserable prospect we had then before us, and have since escaped by a revolution, is now a pleasure which, without that remembrance, I could not so heartily have enjoyed. The ode I was speaking of fell to my lot, which in about half an hour I produced. I cannot say it was much above the merry style of "Sing! sing the day, and sing the song," in the farce; yet, bad as it was, it served to get the school a play-day, and to make me not a little vain upon it; which last effect so disgusted my playfellows, that they left me out of the party I had most a mind to be of in that day's recreation. But their ingratitude served only to increase my vanity; for I considered them as so many beaten tits that had just had the mortification of seeing my hack of a Pegasus come in before them. This low passion is so rooted in our nature, that sometimes riper heads cannot govern it. I have met with much the same silly sort of coldness even from my contemporaries of the theatre, from having the superfluous capacity of writing myself the characters I have acted.

Here perhaps I may again seem to be vain; but if all these facts are true (as true they are) how can I help it? Why am I obliged to conceal them? The merit of the best of them is not so extraordinary as to have warned me to be nice upon it; and the praise due to them is so small a fish it was scarce worth while to

throw my line into the water for it. If I confess my vanity while a boy, can it be vanity when a man to remember it? And if I have a tolerable feature, will not that as much belong to my picture as an imperfection? In a word, from what I have mentioned, I would observe only this; that when we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real defect. To be elated or vain upon it, is showing your money before people in want; ten to one but some who may think you have too much, may borrow, or pick your pocket, before you get home. He who assumes praise to himself, the world will think overpays himself. Even the suspicion of being vain ought as much to be dreaded as the guilt itself. Cæsar was of the same opinion in regard to his wife's chastity. Praise, though it may be our due, is not like a bankbill, to be paid upon demand; to be valuable it must be voluntary. When we are dunned for it, we have a right and privilege to refuse it. If compulsion insists upon it, it can only be paid, as persecution in points of faith is, in a counterfeit coin; and who ever believed occasional conformity to be sincere? Nero, the most vain coxcomb of a tyrant that ever breathed, could not raise an unfeigned applause of his harp by military execution; even where praise is deserved, ill-nature and self-conceit (passions that poll a majority of mankind) will with less reluctance part with their money than their approbation. Men of the greatest merit are forced to stay till they die, before the world will fairly make up their account; then indeed you have a chance for your full due, because it is less grudged when you are incapable of enjoying it: then perhaps even malice shall heap praises upon your memory, though not for your sake, but that your surviving competitors may suffer by a comparison. It is from the same principle that satire shall have a thousand readers where panegyric has one. When I therefore find my name at length in the satirical works of our most celebrated living author, I never look upon those lines as malice