To talk at any other rate of a man’s fortune, is surely to expose one’s self to the ridicule, which the philosopher, you know, threw on the restless humour of king Pyrrhus. ’Tis whim, chimera, madness, or what you will, except sober reason and common sense. Yet still the world cries, “What, sit down with a pittance, when the ways of honour and fortune are open to you? take up with what may barely satisfy, when you have so fair a chance for affluence, and even superfluity?”
Alas! and will that affluence, then, more than satisfy? or can it be worth the while to labour, for a superfluity?
’Tis true the violence of the times, in which it was my fortune to bear a part, had left me bare and unprovided even of those moderate accommodations, which my education and breeding might demand, and which a parent’s piety had indeed bequeathed to me. It was but fitting then I should strive to repair this loss; and the rather, as my honest services gave me leave to hope for a speedy reparation. And thus far I was contented to try my fortune in the court, though at the expence of much uneasy attendance and solicitation. But, seeing that this assiduity was without effect, and that the bounty of two excellent persons[42] hath now set me above the necessity of continuing it, what madness were it to embark again
“Fluctibus in mediis et tempestatibus urbis!”
So that if you will needs be urging me with the ceaseless exhortation of
“I, bone, quo virtus tua te vocat: I pede fausto,
Grandia laturus meritorum præmia:—”
I must take leave to remind you of the sage reply that was made to it. It was, you know, by an old soldier, who found himself exactly in my situation. The purse, which he had lost by one accident, he had recovered by another. The conclusion was, that he had no mind, in this different state of affairs, to turn adventurer again, and expose himself to the same perilous encounters:
“Post hæc ille catus, quantumvis RUSTICUS, ibit,
Ibit eo, quo vis QUI ZONAM PERDIDIT, inquit.”
In one word, my friend, I am happy here, as you see me, in my little farm, which yet is large enough to answer all my real necessities; and I am not in the humour of him in the fable[43], to fill my head with visions, and spend a wretched life in quest of the flying island.
And now, added he, you have before you in one view the principal reasons that have determined me to this retreat. I might have enlarged on each more copiously; but I know to whom I speak: and perhaps to such a one I might even have spared a good deal of what I have now been offering, from the several considerations of my TEMPER, TALENTS, and SITUATION.