'Full of these reflections, he threw his eyes about him, not in search of beauty or elegance, dignity or understanding, but of a woman with ten thousand pounds. Such a woman, in a wealthy part of the kingdom, it was not difficult to find; and by artful management with her father—whose ambition was to make his daughter a gentlewoman—my friend got her, as he boasted to us in confidence two days after his marriage, for a settlement of seventy-three pounds a year less than her fortune might have claimed, and less than himself would have given if the fools had been but wise enough to delay the bargain.
'Thus at once delighted with the superiority of his parts and the augmentation of his fortune, he carried Furia to his own house, in which he never afterwards enjoyed one hour of happiness. For Furia was a wretch of mean intellects, violent passions, a strong voice, and low education, without any sense of happiness but that which consisted in eating, and counting money. Furia was a scold. They agreed in the desire of wealth, but with this difference: that Prudentius was for growing rich by gain, Furia by parsimony. Prudentius would venture his money with chances very much in his favour; but Furia, very wisely observing that what they had was, while they had it, their own, thought all traffic too great a hazard, and was for putting it out at low interest upon good security. Prudentius ventured, however, to insure a ship at a very unreasonable price; but, happening to lose his money, was so tormented with the clamours of his wife that he never durst try a second experiment. He has now grovelled seven-and-forty years under Furia's direction, who never once mentioned him, since his bad luck, by any other name than that of the "usurer."'
The 'Rambler.'—Vol, I. No. 24.
Nemo in sese tentat descendere.—Persius.
None, none descends into himself.—Dryden.
'Among the precepts or aphorisms admitted by general consent and inculcated by repetition, there is none more famous, among the masters of ancient wisdom, than that compendious lesson, Γνωθι σεαυτον—Be acquainted with thyself—ascribed by some to an oracle, and others to Chilo of Lacedæmon.
'We might have had more satisfaction concerning the original import of this celebrated sentence, if history had informed us whether it was uttered as a general instruction to mankind, or as a particular caution to some private inquirer; whether it was applied to some single occasion, or laid down as the universal rule of life.
'The great praise of Socrates is that he drew the wits of Greece, by his instruction and example, from the vain pursuit of natural philosophy to moral inquiries, and turned their thoughts from stars and tides, and matter and motion, upon the various modes of virtue and relations of life.
'The great fault of men of learning is still that they offend against this rule, and appear willing to study anything rather than themselves; for which reason they are often despised by those with whom they imagine themselves above comparison.