and, transported beyond all patience of the filent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embrace, and told me, in a flood of tears, papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him underground, whence he could never come to us again. She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble fpirit; and there was a dignity in her grief, amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought, ftruck me with an instinct of forrow, which, before I was fenfible of what it was to grieve, feized my very foul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo; and receives impreffions fo forcible, that they are as hard to be removed by reafon as any mark with which a child is born is to be taken away by any future application. Hence it is, that good nature in me is no merit; but having been fo frequently overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the cause of any affliction, or could draw defences from my own judgment, I imbibed commiferation, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which has fince enfnared me into ten thousand calamities, and from whence I can reap no advantage, except it be that, in fuch a humour as I am now in, I can the better indulge myself in the softnesses of humanity, and enjoy that fweet anxiety which arises from the memory of paft afflictions.

We that are very old are better able to remember things which befel us in our diftant youth than the paffages of later days. For this reafon it is that the companions of my strong and vigorous years prefent themselves more immediately to me in this office of forrow. Untimely or unhappy deaths are what we are most apt to lament: fo little are we able to make it indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it must happen. Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved from it. Every object that returns to our imagination raises different paffions, according to the circumstance of their departure. Who can have lived in an army, and in a ferious hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men that might long have flourished in the arts of peace, and not join with the imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the

tyrant to whofe ambition they fell facrifices? But gallant men who are cut off by the fword move rather our veneration than our pity; and we gather relief enough from their own contempt of death, to make it no evil which was approached with fo much cheerfulness and attended with so much honour. But when we turn our thoughts from the great parts of life on fuch occafions, and instead of lamenting those who stood ready to give death to those from whom they had the fortune to receive it-I fay, when we let our thoughts wander from fuch noble objects, and confider the havock which is made among the tender and the innocent, pity enters with an unmixed foftnefs, and poffeffes all our fouls at once.

Here (were there words to exprefs fuch fentiments with proper tenderness) I fhould record the beauty, innocence, and untimely death of the first object my eyes ever beheld with love. The beauteous virgin! How ignorantly did she charm, how carelessly excel? Oh, death! thou haft right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high, and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undifcerning, to the thoughtlefs? Nor age, nor business, nor distress, can erafe the dear image from my imagination. In the fame week, I saw her dreffed for a ball and in a fhroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler? I still behold the fmiling earth-A large train of difafters were coming on to my memory, when my fervant knocked at my closet door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the fame fort with that which is to be put to fale on Thursday next at Garraway's coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it, I fent for three of my friends. We are fo intimate, that we can be company in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with fuch a heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolickfome. It revived the fpirits without firing the blood.

The paffion of love happened to be the subject of discourse between two or three of us at the table of the poets this evening; and among other obfervations, it was remarked, that the fame fentiment on this passion had run through all

languages and nations. Menmius, who has a very good taste, fell into a little fort of differtation on this occafion. "It is," faid he, "remarkable, that no paffion has been treated by all who have touched upon it with the fame bent of defign but this. The poets, the moralifts, the painters, in all their defcriptions, allegories, and pictures, have represented it as a soft torment, a bitter fweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable diftrefs, and have only expreffed the fame thought in a different

manner."

The joining of pleasure and pain together in fuch devices, feems to me the only pointed thought I ever read which is natural; and it must have proceeded from its being the uni verfal sense and experience of mankind that they have all spoken of it in the fame manner. I have in my own reading remarked a hundred and three epigrams, fifty odes, and ninetyone fentences tending to this fole purpose.

It is certain, there is no other paffion which does produce fuch contrary effects in fo great a degree. But this may be faid for love, that if you strike it out of the foul, life would be infipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature

would fink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with fome active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to poffefs the mind in the abfence of this paffion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compenfation of fuch exquifite pleasures as those we find in love. The great skill is to heighten the fatisfactions, and deaden the forrows of it, which has been the end of many of my labours, and shall continue to be fo for the fervice of the world in general, and in particular of the fair sex, who are always the best or the worst part of it. It is pity that a paffion, which has in it a capacity of making life happy, fhould not be cultivated to the utmost advantage. Reafon, prudence, and good nature, rightly applied, can thoroughly accomplish this great end, provided they have always a real and constant love to work upon. But this fubject I fhall treat more at large in the history of my married fifter, and in the mean time shall conclude my reflection on the pains and pleasures which attend this paffion, with one