It was a greater dissimilarity, and altogether to be regretted, that my Doctor left no “characteristic and special mark to be observable in his generation;” but upon this I shall make some observations hereafter. What led me to compare these persons, incomparable each in his own way, was that my Doctor, though he did not look upon his own history as miraculous, considered that the course of his life had been directed by a singular and special Providence. How else could it have been that being an only son,—an only child, the sole representative in his generation of an immemorial line,—his father instead of keeping him attached to the soil, as all his forefathers had been, should have parted with him for the sake of his moral and intellectual improvement, not with a view to wealth or worldly advancement, but that he might seek wisdom and ensue it?—that with no other friend than the poor schoolmaster of a provincial townlet, and no better recommendation, he should have been placed with a master by whose care the defects of his earlier education were supplied, and by whose bounty, after he had learned the practical routine of his profession, he was sent to study it as a science in a foreign university, which a little before had been raised by Boerhaave to its highest reputation;—that not only had his daily bread been given him without any of that wearing anxiety which usually attends upon an unsettled and precarious way of life, but in the very house which when sent thither in boyhood he had entered as a stranger, he found himself permanently fixed, as successively the pupil, the assistant, the friend, and finally the successor and heir of his benefactor;—above all, that he had not been led into temptation, and that he had been delivered from evil.
“My life,” said an unfortunate poor man who was one of the American Bishop Hobart's occasional correspondents, “has been a chapter of blunders and disappointments.” John Wilkes said that “the chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book;” and he, who had his good things here, never troubled himself to consider whether the great volume were the Book of Chance, or of Necessity, the Demogorgon of those by whom no other deity is acknowledged. With a wiser and happier feeling Bishop White Kennett when he was asked “where are we?” answered the question thus,—“in a world where nothing can be depended on but a future state; in the way to it, little comfort but prayers and books.” White Kennett might have enjoyed more comfort if he had been born in less contentious times, or if he had taken less part in their contentions, or if he had been placed in a less conspicuous station. Yet he had little cause to complain of his lot, and he has left behind him good works and a good name.
There is scarcely any man who in thoughtfully contemplating the course of his own life, would not find frequent reason to say,—
in fede mia
Ho fatto bene a non fare a mio modo.2
The Doctor however was one of the very few who have never been put out of their designed course, and never been disposed to stray from it.
Spesso si perde il buono
Cercando il meglio. E a scegliere il sentiero
Chi vuol troppo esser saggio,
Del tempo abusa, e non fa mai viaggio.3
2 RICCIARDETTO.
3 METASTASIO.