No. 208. SATURDAY, MARCH, 14,1 1752. Ηράκλειτος ἐγώ· τί με ὦ κάτω ἕλκετ' ἄμουσοι; -DIOG. LAERT. Begone, ye blockheads, Heraclitus cries, And leave my labours to the learn'd and wise; I scorn the multitude, alive and dead. IME, which puts an end to all human pleasures and sorrows, has likewise concluded the labours of the Rambler. Having supported, for two years, the anxious employment of a periodical writer, and multiplied my essays to upwards of two hundred, I have now determined to desist. The reasons of this resolution it is of little importance to declare, since justification is unnecessary when no objection is made. I am far from supposing that the cessation of my performances will raise any inquiry, for I have never been much a favourite of the public, nor can boast, that, in the progress of my undertaking, I have been animated by the rewards of the liberal, the caresses of the great, or the praises of the eminent. 1 In the first edition the date is wrongly given as March 17 -the day of Mrs. Johnson's death, But I have no design to gratify pride by submission, or malice by lamentation; nor think it reasonable to complain of neglect from those whose regard I never solicited. If I have not been distinguished by the distributors of literary honours, I have seldom descended to the arts by which favour is obtained. I have seen the meteors of fashion rise and fall, without any attempt to add a moment to their duration. I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topic of the day; I have rarely exemplified my assertions by living characters; in my papers no man could look for censures of his enemies, or praises of himself; and they only were expected to peruse them whose passions left them leisure for abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by its naked dignity. To some, however, I am indebted for encouragement, and to others for assistance. The number of my friends was never great, but they have been such as would not suffer me to think that I was writing in vain, and I did not feel much dejection from the want of popularity. My obligations having not been frequent, my acknowledgments may be soon despatched. I can restore to all my correspondents their productions with little diminution of the bulk of my volumes, though not without the loss of some pieces to which particular honours have been paid. The parts from which I claim no other praise than that of having given them an opportunity of appearing, are the four billets in the tenth paper, the second letter in the fifteenth, the thirtieth, the forty-fourth, the ninety-seventh, and the hundredth papers, and the second letter in the hundred and seventh.1 Having thus deprived myself of many excuses which candour might have admitted for the inequality of my compositions, being no longer able to allege the necessity of gratifying correspondents, the importunity with which publication was solicited, or obstinacy with which correction was rejected, I must remain accountable for all my faults, and submit, without subterfuge, to the censures of criticism, which, however, I shall not endeavour to soften by a formal deprecation, or to overbear by the influence of a patron. The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion; and, though greatness has sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness. Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel; having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication.2 The seeming vanity with which I have some 1 The contributors were Miss Mulso (afterwards Mrs. Chapone), Miss Catherine Talbot, Miss Carter, and Samuel Richardson. Johnson, in the Preface to Richardson's Rambler (No. 97), describes him as "an author from whom the age has received greater favours, who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue." 2 "Though the loftiness of Dr. Johnson's mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person, he wrote a very great number of dedications for others."-Boswell's Johnson, times spoken of myself, would perhaps require an apology, were it not extenuated by the example of those who have published essays before me, and by the privilege which every nameless writer has been hitherto allowed. "A mask," says Castiglione," confers a right of acting and speaking with "less restraint, even when the wearer happens to "be known." He that is discovered without his own consent, may claim some indulgence, and cannot be rigorously called to justify those sallies or frolics which his disguise must prove him desirous to conceal.2 But I have been cautious lest this offence should be frequently or grossly committed; for, as one of the philosophers directs us to live with a friend as with one that is some time to become an enemy, I have always thought it the duty of an anonymous author to write as if he expected to be hereafter known. I am willing to flatter myself with hopes, that, by collecting these papers, I am not preparing for my future life, either shame or repentance. That all are happily imagined, or accurately polished, 1 "Johnson said, 'The best book that ever was written upon good breeding, Il Corteggiano, by Castiglione, grew up at the little court of Urbino, and you should read it.'"-Boswell's Johnson, v. 276. Castiglione was born in 1478 and died in 1529. The passage which Johnson quotes from memory is found in bk. ii., p. 19, of the English translation, entitled The Courtier, ed. 1724. 2 Edward Cave, the publisher of The Rambler, says that " Garrick and others, who knew the author's powers and style from the first, unadvisedly asserting their suspicions, over. turned the scheme of secrecy."-Boswell's Johnson, i. 209, note I, that the same sentiments have not sometimes recurred, or the same expressions been too frequently repeated, I have not confidence in my abilities sufficient to warrant. He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease; he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce. Whatever shall be the final sentence of mankind, I have at least endeavoured to deserve their kindness. I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.1 When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarised the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas, but have rarely admitted any word not authorised by former writers ;2 1 "Sir William Temple (said Johnson) was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose."-Boswell's Johnson, iii. 257. "Enfin Malherbe vint, et le premier en France -Euvres de Voltaire, ed. 1819-25, xlii. 10. 2 See ante, p. 53, n. I. |