No. 34. SATURDAY, MARCH 3. 1753
Has toties optata exegit gloria poenas. JUV. Sat. x. 187.
Such fate pursues the votaries of praise.
TO THE ADVENTURER.
SIR,
Fleet Prison, Feb. 24.
TO a benevolent disposition, every state of life will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind. Opulence and splendour are enabled to dispel the cloud of adversity, to dry up the tears of the widow and the orphan, and to increase the felicity of all around them: their example will animate virtue, and retard the progress of vice. And even indigence and obscurity, though without power to confer happiness, may at least prevent misery, and apprize those who are blinded by their passions, that they are on the brink of irremediable calamity.
Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering others from that folly which has embittered my own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER from the dreary mansions of wretchedness and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully constructed, as to fly open for the reception of strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of adamant to such as are within them:
——Facilis descensus Averni:
Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.
Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.———— VIRG. AEn. vi. 126.
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return and view the cheerful skies;
In this the task and mighty labour lies. DRYDEN.