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curiosity of his sons hurried them out of rural privacy into the open world, from whence they had not soon an inclination to return. This, however, he had always hoped; he pleased himself with the success of his schemes, and felt no inconvenience from solitude till an apoplexy deprived him of his wife.

Thrasybulus had now no companion; and the maladies of increasing years having taken from him much of the power of procuring amusement for himself, he thought it necessary to procure some inferior friend, who might ease him of his economical solicitudes, and divert him by cheerful conversation. All these qualities he soon recollected in Vafer, a clerk in one of the offices over which he had formerly presided. Vafer was invited to visit his old patron, and being by his station acquainted with the present modes of life, and by constant practice dexterous in business, entertained him with so many novelties, and so readily disentangled his affairs, that he was desired to resign his clerkship, and accept a liberal salary in the house of Thrasybulus.

Vafer, having always lived in a state of dependance, was well versed in the arts by which favour is obtained, and could, without repugnance or hesitation, accommodate himself to every caprice, and echo every opinion. He never doubted but to be convinced, nor attempted opposition but to flatter Thrasybulus with the pleasure of a victory. By this practice he found his way into his patron's heart, and, having first made himself agreeable, soon became important. His insidious diligence, by which

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the laziness of age was gratified, engrossed the management of affairs; and his petty offices of civility, and occasional intercessions, persuaded the tenants to consider him as their friend and benefactor, and to entreat his enforcement of their representations of hard years, and his countenance to petitions for abatement of rent.

Thrasybulus had now banqueted on flattery, till he could no longer bear the harshness of remonstrance or the insipidity of truth. All contrariety to his own opinion shocked him like a violation of some natural right, and all recommendation of his affairs to his own inspection was dreaded by him as a summons to torture. His children were alarmed by the sudden riches of Vafer, but their complaints were heard by their father with impatience, as the result of a conspiracy against his quiet, and a design to condemn him, for their own advantage, to groan out his last hours in perplexity and drudgery. The daughters retired with tears in their eyes, but the son continued his importunities till he found his inheritance hazarded by his obstinacy.

Vafer triumphed over all their efforts, and, continuing to confirm himself in authority, at the death of his master, purchased an estate, and bade defiance to inquiry and justice.

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No. 163. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1751

Mitte superba pati fastidia, spemque caducam
Despice; vive tibi, nam moriere tibi.

Bow to no patron's insolence; rely

SENECA.

On no frail hopes, in freedom live and die. F. LEWIS.

ONE of the cruelties exercised by wealth and

ΝΟΝ

power upon indigence and dependance is more mischievous in its consequences, or more frequently i practised with wanton negligence, than the encouragement of expectations which are never to be gratified, and the elation and depression of the heart by needless vicissitudes of hope and disappointment.

Every man is rich or poor, according to proportion between his desires and enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession; and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain, is no less an enemy to his quiet, than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.

But representations thus refined exhibit no adequate idea of the guilt of pretended friendship; of artifices by which followers are attracted only to decorate the retinue of pomp, and swell the shout of popularity, and to be dismissed with contempt and ignominy, when their leader has succeeded or miscarried, when he is sick of show, and weary of noise. While a man infatuated with the promises of greatness, wastes his hours and days in attendance and solicitation, the honest opportunities of improving his condition pass by without his notice;

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he neglects to cultivate his own barren soil, because he expects every moment to be placed in regions of spontaneous fertility, and is seldom roused from his delusion, but by the gripe of distress which he cannot resist, and the sense of evils which cannot be remedied.

The punishment of Tantalus in the infernal regions affords a just image of hungry servility, flattered with the approach of advantage, doomed to lose it before it comes into his reach, always within a few days of felicity, and always sinking back to his former wants:

Καὶ μὴν Τάνταλον εἰσεῖδον, χαλέπ' ἄλγε ̓ ἔχοντα,
Εσταότ' ἐν λίμνη· ἡ δὲ προσέπλαζε γενεὶῳ
Σσεῦτο δὲ διψάων, πιέειν δ ̓ οὐκ εἶχεν ἑλέσθαι·
Οσσάκι γαρ κύψεὶ ὁ γέρων πιέειν μενεαίνων,
Τοσσάχ ̓ ὅδωρ ἀπολέσκετ ̓ ἀναβροχέν· ἀμφὶ δὲ ποσσὶ
Γαῖα μέλαινα φάνεσκε, καταζήνασκε δὲ δαίμων.
Δένδρεα δ' ὑψιπέτηλα κατακρῆθεν χέε καρπὸν,
*Ογχναι, καὶ ῥοιαὶ, καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι,
Συκαῖ τε γλυκεραι, καὶ ἐλαῖαι τηλεθόωσαι·
Τῶν ὁπότ' ιθύσει ̓ ὁ γέρων ἐπὶ χερσὶ μάσασθαι,
Τάσδ ̓ ἄνεμος ρίπτασκε ποτι νέφεα σκιόεντα.

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Hom. Od. Λ'. 581.

“I saw, says Homer's Ulysses, "the severe punishment of Tantalus. In a lake, whose waters approached to his lips, he stood burning with thirst, without the power to drink. Whenever he inclined his head to the stream, some deity commanded it to be dry, and the dark earth appeared at his feet. Around him lofty trees spread their fruits to view; the pear, the pomegranate and the apple, the green

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olive and the luscious fig quivered before him, which, whenever he extended his hand to seize them, were snatched by the winds into clouds and obscurity.'

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This image of misery was perhaps originally suggested to some poet by the conduct of his patron, by the daily contemplation of splendour which he never must partake, by fruitless attempts to catch at interdicted happiness, and by the sudden evanescence of his reward, when he thought his labours almost at an end. To groan with poverty, when all about him was opulence, riot, and superfluity, and to find the favours which he had long been encouraged to hope, and had long endeavoured to deserve, squandered at last on nameless ignorance, was to thirst with water flowing before him, and to see the fruits, to which his hunger was hastening, scattered by the wind. Nor can my correspondent, whatever he may have suffered, express with more justness or force the vexations of dependance.

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I am one of those mortals who have been courted and envied as the favourites of the great. Having often gained the prize of composition at the university, I began to hope that I should obtain the same distinction in every other place, and determined to forsake the profession to which I was destined by my parents, and in which the interest of my family would have procured me a very advantageous settlement. The pride of wit fluttered in

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