but little acquainted. I hope you will furnish your- An self with some books of natural history, and some unreasonglasses and other instruments of observation. Trust able request as little as you can to report; examine all you can by your own senses. I do not doubt but you will be able to add much to knowledge, and, perhaps, to medicine. Wild nations trust to simples; and, perhaps, the Peruvian bark is not the only specifick which those extensive regions may afford us.

"Wherever you are, and whatever be your fortune, be certain, dear Sir, that you carry y with you my kind wishes; and that whether you return hither, or stay in the other hemisphere, to hear that you are happy will give pleasure to, Sir,

"Your most affectionate humble servant,

Insha Mahorobi❝SAM. JOHNSON." "June 1, 1762.", sioiloe" dasar des noY Rubles

A lady having at this time solicited him to obtain the Archbishop of Canterbury's patronage to have her son sent to the University, one of those solicitations which are too frequent, where people, anxious for a particular object, do not consider propriety, or the opportunity which the persons whom they solicit have to assist them, he wrote to her the following answer; with a copy of which I am favoured by the Reverend Dr. Farmer, Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge.cups

"MADAM,

w

biado

"I HOPE you will believe that my delay in answering your letter could proceed only from my unwillingness to destroy any hope that you had

Improper formed. Hope is itself a species of happiness, expecta- and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world tion affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately

enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by

toke-
sadvantapain; and expectations improperly indulged, must
dado end in disappointment.

If it be asked, what is the
improper expectation which it is dangerous to in-
dulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is
such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but
by desire; expectation raised, not by the common
occurrences of life, but by the wants of the ex-
pectant; an expectation that requires the common
course of things to be changed, and the general rules
of action to be broken.

"When you made your request to me, you
should have considered, Madam, what you were
asking. You ask me to solicit a great man, to
whom I never spoke, for a young person whom I
had never seen, upon a supposition which I had no
means of knowing to be true. There is no reason
why, amongst all the great, I should chuse to suppli-
cate the Archbishop, nor why, among all the possible
objects of his bounty, the Archbishop should chuse
your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly con-
viction is admitted, when interest opposes it; but
surely, Madam, you must allow, that there is no
reason why that should be done by me, which every
other man may do with equal reason, and which,
indeed, no man can do properly, without some very
particular relation both to the Archbishop and to
If I could help you in this exigence by any
proper means,
it would give me pleasure; but this
proposal is so very remote from usual methods,
that I cannot comply with it, but at the risk of

you.

such answer and suspicions as I believe you do not Letter to wish me to undergo.doraM Baretti

"I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty youth, and will, perhaps, find some better friend than I can procure him; but though he should at last miss the University, he may still be wise, useful, and happy.

“ I am, Madam, I doidy

adr Duct I stod "Your most humble servant,

usdr soda bas Tow" SAM. JOHNSON." "June 8, 1762."ost wou a vd betidudat made ful br Jawond oluil yie7 asw I medw

"TO MR. JOSEPH BARETTI, AT MILAN. W

19gnol or any SIR, any hapo London, July 20, 1762.

"HOWEVER justly you may accuse me for want of punctuality in correspondence, I am not so far a lost in negligence as to omit the opportunity of writing to you, which Mr. Beauclerk's passage through Milan affords me.

"I suppose you received the Idlers, and I intend that you shall soon receive Shakspeare, that you may explain his works to the ladies of Italy, and tell them the story of the editor, among the other strange narratives with which your long residence in this unknown region has supplied your of doubda "As you have now been long away, I suppose your curiosity may pant for some news of your old friends. Miss Williams and I live much as we did. Miss Cotterel still continues to cling to Mrs. Porter, and Charlotte is now big of the fourth child. Reynolds gets six thousands a year. Levet is lately married, not without much suspicion that he has been wretchedly cheated in his match. Mr. Chambers

Mr.

·Note

A visit to is gone this day, for the first time, the circuit Lichfield with the Judges. Mr. Richardson 1 is dead of an apoplexy, and his second daughter has married a merchant.

"My vanity, or my kindness, makes me flatter myself, that you would rather hear of me than of those whom I have mentioned; but of myself I have very little which I care to tell. Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My play-fellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I was no longer young. My only remaining friend has changed his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-inlaw, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, has lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much happiness, there is, at least, such a diversity of good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

"I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end? Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to your own country: whether time has made any alteration for the better, and whether, when the first raptures of salutation were over, you did not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

1 [Samuel Richardson, the authour of Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison, &c. He died July 4, 1761, aged 72. -M.]

the arts

Suportame all Small thin

"Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, George when they have no greater occasions than the journey III. a of a wit to his own town: yet such pleasures and patron of such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility, a mind able to see common incidents in their real state, is disposed by very common incidents to very serious contemplations. Let us trust that a time will come, when the present moment shall be no longer irksome; when we shall not borrow all our happiness from hope, which at last is to end in disappointment. ownnym ni

"I beg that you will shew Mr. Beauclerk all the civilities which you have in your power; for he has always been kind to me.

"I have lately seen Mr. Stratico, Professor of Padua, who has told me of your quarrel with an Abbot of the Celestine order; but had not the particulars very ready in his memory. When you write to Mr. Marsili, let him know that I remember him with kindness.

May you, my Baretti, be very happy at Milan,
or some other place nearer to, Sir,

"Your most affectionate humble servant,yund
"SAM. JOHNSON."

M big asbis 2 anmonT .M
The accession of George the Third to the throne
of these kingdoms, opened a new and brighter
prospect to men of literary merit, who had been
honoured with no mark of royal favour in the pre-
ceding reign. His present Majesty's education in
this country, as well as his taste and beneficence,
prompted him to be the patron of science and
the arts; and early this year Johnson having been

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