sing Morefields, who was follow'd by a middle-ag'd shabby fellow importunately begging for six-pence. The gentleman wonder'd at his odd demand, and told him he had not for him: But the fellow walk'd along, repeating his intreaties, till finding no likelihood of success—Well, Sir, says he, with a melancholy air. I shall trouble you no more!—but that small matter wou'd have sav'd me from doing what I shall now be forc'd to do!—Then fetching a deep sigh, he shook his head, and slowly mov'd away.—The strangeess of his words and behaviour, struck the gentleman; this poor creature, thought he, by want is grown desperate, and shall my refusal of such a trifle drive him to extremities? With that, calling back the fellow, here, friend, is six-pence for thee; but 'pr'ythee tell me the meaning of what you said just now. The fellow thank'd him, and pocketting the money, Why truly, master, reply'd he, I've been begging here this whole day to little purpose, and unless your charity had sav'd me from it, must have been sorc'd to work, the thoughts of which gave me no small disquiet.
The other part of this discourse having a pretty near affinity with the arguments used in the London Journal No. 602, on the same subject, we refer our readers thereto, in p. 59, 60. No 2. Vol. I.
Read's Journal, Sat. March 27.
HIS Correspondent Cato gives him, in a letter, his notions of Pleasure, which, he says, some so fiercely declaim against, as if all were beasts who have the least appetite to it.
Next, he describes a more considerable party, which he divides into two classes; the first are those who immerse themselves into pleasures. without regard of consequences; the other consists of the more refined debauchees, who, not content with their own guilt, are assiduous to seduce others, by putting reason to the unnatural task of justifying by argument their apostacy from virtue.
Seneca describes the first class, where, he says, there are a sort of people who pass their lives as straws pass through the water, which do not swim but are carried: They borrow their dress from fashion, take their religion upon trust, and for morals never trouble their heads at all; are a sort of living Adjectives, with significations entirely passive.
This argument Crato illustrates by two examples. The first is Sulpitius, whom he pictures as a man of tolerable parts, but thro' the indulgence of his relations, was not suffer'd to submit to the slavery of a proper education; so that he is a downright straw, and owes his motion wholly to the current of the age, which having driven him by chance among the sticklers for liberty, he is a strenuous advocate for freedom, and takes his notions from the common-place topicks on that head. His private life is acted conformable to that of his companions, who are rakes, and passes thro the world like a horse in a carrier's team, never enquiring the road, but joggs on contentedly in the track of others that goes before him.
Clarissa, the other instance he brings, is one of these fluctuating animals, and now about 25. Having, till of late, resided in and about the court, she lives according to the mode, and has not a single folly but she takes from the fashion; her fortune originally 3000l. is now reduc'd to 1200, by balls, &c. and has consum'd 500l. in two years with the mercer and milliner. Her uncle Thrifty, has oblig'd her to retire to a small village in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, where she and her maid are just what they were, the scene is all that's chang'd, and the same airs which were plaid over in the park, the play-house, and the assembly, now entertain the scholastick beaux esprits at her tea-table,the
