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Now for the writing of this werke,
I, who am a lonesome clerke,
Purposed for to write a book

After the world, that whilome took
Its course in oldè days long passed:
But for men sayn, it is now lassed
In worser plight than it was tho,
I thought me for to touch also
The world which neweth every day—
So as I can, so as I may,

Albeit I sickness have and pain,

And long have had, yet would I fain
Do my mind's hest and besiness,
That in some part, so as I guess,

The gentle mind may be advised.

GOWER, Pro. to the Confess. Amantis.

C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT,

CHANCERY LANE.

THE FRIEND.

INTRODUCTION.

Παρὰ Σέξτου τὴν ἔννοιαν τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ζῆν καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἀπλάςως, -ὥςε κολακείας μὲν πάσης προσηνεςέραν εἶναι τὴν ὁμιλίαν αὐτοῦ, αἰδεσιμώτατον δὲ παρ' αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν εἶναι· καὶ ἅμα μὲν ἀπαθέςατον εἶναι, ἅμα δὲ φιλοςοργότατον· καὶ τὸ ἰδεῖν ἄνθρωπον σαφῶς ἔλάχιςον τῶν ἑαυτοῦ καλῶν ἡγούμενον τὴν αὑτοῦ πολυμαθίην.-Μ. ANTONINUS.*

From Sextus, and from the contemplation of his character, I learned what it was to live a life in harmony with nature; and that seemliness and dignity of deportment, which insured the profoundest reverence at the very same time that his company was more winning than all the flattery in the world. To him I owe likewise that I have known a man at once the most dispassionate, and the most affectionate, and who of all his attractions set the least value on the multiplicity of his literary acquisitions.

To the Editor of The Friend.

SIR,—I HOPE you will not ascribe to presumption the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of your work. I feel deeply interested in the cause you have undertaken to support; and my object in writing this letter is to describe to

* L. I. 9. But the passage is made up from, rather than found in, Antoninus.-Ed.

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you, in part from my own feelings, what I conceive to be the state of many minds, which ich may derive important advantage from your instructions.

I speak, Sir, of those who, though bred up under our unfavourable system of education, have yet held at times some intercourse with nature, and with those hose great minds whose works have been moulded by the spirit of nature; who, therefore, when they pass from the seclusion and a constraint of early study, bring with them into the new scene of the world much of the pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is greatly good in thought and action. To such the season of that entrance into the world is a season of fearful importance; not not for the

Seduction of its pas

sions, but of its opinions. Whatever be their intellectual powers, unless extraordinary circumstances in their lives lives have been so favourable to the growth of meditative genius, that their speculative opinions must spring out of their early feelings, their minds are still at the mercy of fortune: they have no inward impulse steadily to propel them and must trust to the chances of the world for a guide. And such is our present moral and intellectual state, that these chances are little else than variety of danger. There will be a thousand causes conspiring to complete the work of a false education, and by inclosing the mind on every side from the influences of natural feeling, to degrade its inborn dignity, and finally bring the

heart itself under subjection to a corrupted understanding. I am anxious to describe to you what I have experienced or seen of the dispositions and feelings that will aid every other cause of danger, and tend to lay the mind open to the infection of all those falsehoods in opinion and sentiment, which constitute the degeneracy of the age.

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Though it would not be difficult to prove, that the mind of the country is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good, there is nothing in the face of the times so dark and saddening and repulsive—as to shock the first feelings of a generous spirit, and drive it at once to seek refuge in the elder ages of our greatness. There yet survives so much of the character bred up through long years of liberty, danger, and glory, that even what this age produces bears traces of those that are past, and it still yields enough of beautiful, and splendid, bold, to captivate an ardent but untutored imagination. And in this real excellence is the beginning of danger: for it is the first spring of that excessive admiration of the age which at last brings down to its own level'a mind born above it. If there existed only the general disposition of al who are formed with a high capacity for good, to be rather credulous of excellence than suspiciously and severely just, the error would not be carried far: but there are, to a young mind, in this

country and at this time, numerous powerful causes concurring to inflame this disposition, till the excess of the affection above the worth of its object is beyond all computation. To trace these causes it will be necessary to follow the history of a pure and noble mind from the first moment of that critical passage from seclusion to the world, which changes all the circumstances of its intellectual existence, shews it for the first time the real scene of living men, and calls up the new feeling of numerous relations by which it is to be connected with them.

To the young adventurer in life, who enters upon his course with such a mind, every thing seems made for delusion. He comes with a spirit the dearest feelings and highest thoughts of which have sprung up under the influences of nature. He transfers to the realities of life the high wild fancies of visionary boyhood: he brings with him into the world the passions of solitary and untamed imagination, and hopes which he has learned from dreams. Those dreams have been of the great and wonderful and lovely, of all which in these has yet been disclosed to him: his thoughts have dwelt among the wonders of nature, and among the loftiest spirits of men, 'heroes, and sages, and saints; those whose deeds, and thoughts, and hopes, were high above ordinary mortality, have been the familiar companions of his soul. To love and to admire has been the joy

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