gratify curiosity, and sufficiently interesting to engage the passions, may afford an entertainment, which, if it is not lasting, is yet of the highest kind. Of such, therefore, this paper will frequently consist: but it should be remembered, that it is much more difficult and laborious, to invent a story, however simple and however short, than to recollect topics of instruction, or to remark the scenes of life as they are shifted before us.

N° 5. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1752.

Tunc et aves tutas movere per aëra pennas ;
Et lepus impavidus mediis erravit in agris:
Nec sua credulitas piscem suspenderat hamo.
Cuncta sine insidiis, nullamque timentia fraudem,
Plenaque pacis erant.-

OVID.

Then birds in airy space might safely move,
And tim'rous hares on heaths securely rove:
Nor needed fish the guileful hook to fear;
For all was peaceful, and that peace sincere.

DRYDEN.

I HAVE before remarked, that it is the peculiar infelicity of those who live by intellectual labour, not to be always able equally to improve their time by application: there are seasons when the power of invention is suspended, and the mind sinks into a state of debility from which it can no more recover itself, than a person who sleeps can by a voluntary effort awake. I was sitting in my study a few nights ago in these perplexing circumstances, and after long rumination and many ineffectual attempts to start a hint which I might pur

sue in my lucubration of this day, I determined to go to bed, hoping that the morning would remove every impediment to study, and restore the vigour of my mind.

I was no sooner asleep than I was relieved from my distress by means which, if I had been waking, would have increased it; and instead of impressing upon my mind a train of new ideas in a regular succession, would have filled it with astonishment and terror. For in dreams, whether they are produced by a power of the imagination to combine images which reason would separate, or whether the mind is passive and receives impressions from some invisible agent, the memory seems to lie wholly terpid, and the understanding to be employed only about such objects as are then presented, without comparing the present with the past. When we sleep, we often converse with a friend who is either absent or dead, without remembering that the grave or the ocean is between us. We float like a feather upon the wind, or we find ourselves this moment in England and the next in India, without reflecting that the laws of nature are suspended, or inquiring how the scene could have been so suddenly shifted before us. We are familiar with prodigies, we accommodate ourselves to every event however romantic: and we not only reason, but act upon principles which are in the highest degree absurd and extravagant.

In that state, therefore, in which no prodigy could render me unfit to receive instruction, I imagined myself to be still sitting in my study, pensive and dispirited, and that I suddenly heard a small shrill voice pronounce these words, "Take your pen; I will dictate an Adventurer." I turned to see from whom this voice proceeded, but I could discover nothing: believing, therefore, that my good

genius or some favouring muse was present, I immediately prepared to write, and the voice dictated the following narrative:

"I was the eldest son of a country gentleman who possessed a large estate, and when I was about nineteen years of age fell with my horse as I was hunting, my neck was dislocated by the fall, and for want of immediate assistance, I died before I could be carried home: but I found myself the next moment, with inexpressible grief and astonishment, under the shape of a mongrel puppy in the stable of an inn, that was kept by a man who had been butler to my father, and had married the cook.

'I was indeed, greatly caressed; but my master in order as he said to increase my beauty as well as my strength, soon disencumbered me of my ears and my tail. Besides the pain that I suffered in the operation, I experienced the disadvantages of this mutilation in a thousand instances: this however, was but a small part of the calamity which in this state I was appointed to suffer.

6

My master had a son about four years old, who was yet a greater favourite than myself; and his passions having been always indulged as soon as they appeared, he was encouraged to gratify his resentment against any thing, whether animate or inanimate, that had offended him, by beating me; and when he did any mischief, for of other faults little notice was taken, the father, the mother, or the maid, were sure to chastise me in his stead.

'This treatment from persons whom I had been accustomed to regard with contempt, and command with insolence, was not long to be borne: early one morning, therefore, I departed. I continued my journey till the afternoon without stopping, though it rained hard: about four o'clock I passed through a village; and perceiving a heap of

shavings that were sheltered from the wet by the thatch of a house which some carpenters were repairing, I crept, as I thought unnoticed into the corner, and laid myself down upon them: but a man who was plaining a board, observing that I was a strange dog and of a mongrel breed, resolved to make himself and his companions merry at my expence: for this purpose, having made a hole about two inches diameter in a piece of deal, he suddenly catched me up, and putting the remainder of my tail through this diabolical engine, he made it fast by driving in a wedge, with a heavy mallet, which crushing the bone put me to inexpressible torment. The moment he set me down, the wretches who had been spectators of this waggery, burst into immoderate laughter at the awkward motions by which I expressed my misery, and my ridiculous attempt to run away from that which I could not but carry with me. They hooted after me till I was out of their sight: however, fear, pain, and confusion, still urging me forward with involuntary speed, I ran with such force, between two pales that were not far enough asunder to admit my clog, that I left it with the remainder of my tail behind me. I then found myself in a farm-yard; and fearing that I should be worried by the mastiff which I saw at a distance, I continued my flight; but some peasants who were at work in a neighbouring barn, perceiving that I ran without being pursued, that my eyes were inflamed, and that my mouth was covered with foam, imagined that I was mad, and knocked out my brains with a flail.

"Soon after I had quitted this maimed and persecuted carcase, I found myself under the wings of a bullfinch with three others that were just hatched. I now rejoiced in the hope of soaring be

yond the reach of human barbarity, and becoming like my mother a denizen of the sky: but my mother, before I was perfectly fledged, was surprised in her nest by a school-boy, who grasped her so hard, to prevent her escape, that she soon after died: he then took the nest with all that it contained, which he deposited in a basket, where I presently lost my three companions in misfortune, by change of food and unskilful management. I survived; and soon after I could feed myself, I was taken by my tyrant's mother when she went to pay her rent, as a present to her landlord's daughter, a young lady who was extremely beautiful, and in the eighteenth year of her age.

My captivity now began to lose its terrors; I no longer dreaded the rude gripe of a boisterous urchin, whose fondness was scarce less dangerous than his resentment; who, in the zeal of his attachment to a new plaything, might neglect me till I perished with hunger; or who might wring off my neck, because he had some other use for the halfpenny which should procure me food: the confinement of a cage became habitual; I was placed near a pleasant window; I was constantly fed by one of the finest hands in the world; and I imagined, that I could suffer no misery under the patronage of smiles and graces.

⚫ Such was my situation, when a young lady from London made an afternoon's visit to my mistress: she took an opportunity to caress me among her other favourites, which were a parrot, a monkey, and a lap dog; she chirped, and holding out her finger to me, I hopped upon it; she stroked me, put my head to her cheek, and to show my sensibility of her favours I began to sing: as soon as my song was over, she turned to my mistress, and told her, that the dear little creature might