Of Providence, and let me read my life,
My heart had broke when I beheld the sum
Of ills which one by one I have endured.”
Whereupon the lady’s faithful Anna remarks:
“That God, whose ministers good angels are,
Hath shut the book, in mercy to mankind.”
Not but that this doctrine has found special recusants, if too generally taken, or, in their own instance, too particularly applied. “I have somewhere read,” says Caleb Williams, “that Heaven in mercy hides from us the future incidents of our life. My own experience does not well accord with this assertion.” And mentioning one critical occasion, he adds, that this once at least he should have been saved from insupportable labour and indescribable anguish, could he have foreseen what was then impending.—Sometimes the natural complaint is like that of Duke Ferdinand in John Webster’s tragedy:
“Oh, most imperfect light of human reason,
That mak’st us so unhappy to foresee
What we can least prevent!”