thing, for feeding and tending you, a weakly child, and shedding tears when the convulsions you were then troubled with returned upon you. By my care you outgrew them, to throw away the vigor of your youth in the arms of harlots, and deny your mother what is not your's to detain. Both your sisters are crying to see the passion which I smother: but if you please to go on thus, like a gentleman of the town, and forget all regards to yourself and family, I shall immediately enter upon your estate for the arrear due to me, and, without one tear more, contemn you for forgetting the fondness of your mother, as much as you have the example of your father. O Frank, do I live to omit writing myself

"MADAM,

"Your affectionate mother,

"A. T."

"I will come down to-morrow and pay the money on my knees. Pray write so no more. I will take care you never shall; for I will be forever hereafter "Your most dutiful son,

"F. T."

"I will bring down new hoods for my sisters. Pray let all be forgotten."

T

No. 264. WEDNESDAY, January 2, 1712.

IT

BY STEELE,

Secretum iter et fallentis semita vita.

HOR. Ep. 18. 1. 1. 103.

CREECH.

Close retirement, and a life by stealth.

T has been from age to age an affectation to love the pleasure of solitude, among those who cannot

possibly be supposed qualified for passing life in that manner. This people have taken up from reading the many agreeable things which have been written. on that subject, for which we are beholden to excellent persons who delighted in being retired and abstracted from the pleasures that enchant the generality of the world. This way of life recommended indeed with great beauty, and in such a manner as disposes the reader for the time to a pleasing forgetfulness, or negligence of the particular hurry of life in which he is engaged, together with a longing for that state which he is charmed with in description. But when we consider the world itself, and how few there are capable of a religious, learned, or philosophic solitude, we shall be apt to change a regard to that sort of solitude, for being a little singular in enjoying time after the way a man himself likes best in the world, without going so far as wholly to withdraw from it. I have often observed, there is not a man breathing who does not differ from all other men, as much in the sentiments of his mind as the features of his face. The felicity is, when any one is so happy as to find out and follow what is the proper bent of his genius, and turn all his endeavors to exert himself according as that prompts him. Instead of this, which is an innocent method of enjoying a man's self, and turning out of the general tracks, wherein you have crowds of rivals, there are those who pursue their own way out of a sourness and spirit of contradiction.

These men do every thing which they are able to support, as if guilt and impunity could not go together. They choose a thing only because another dislikes it; and affect forsooth an inviolable constancy in matters of no manner of moment. Thus sometimes an old fellow shall wear this or that sort of

cut in his clothes with great integrity(a), while all the rest of the world are degenerated into buttons, pockets, and loops, unknown to their ancestors. As insignificant as even this is, if it were searched to the bottom, you perhaps would find it not sincere, but that he is in the fashion in his heart, and holds out from mere obstinacy. But I am running from my intended purpose, which was to celebrate a certain particular manner of passing away life, and is a contradiction to no man, but a resolution to contract none of the exhorbitant desires by which others are enslaved. The best way of separating a man's self from the world, is to give up the desire of being known to it. After a man has preserved his innocence, and performed all duties incumbent upon him, his time spent in his own way is what makes his life differ from that of a slave. If they who affect show and pomp knew how many of their spectators derided their trivial taste, they would be very much. less elated, and have an inclination to examine the merit of all they have to do with they would soon find out that there are many who make a figure below what their fortune or merit entitles them to, out of mere choice, and an elegant desire of ease and disincumbrance. It would look like romance to tell you, in this age, of an old man, who is contented to pass for an humorist, and one who does not understand the figure he ought to make in the world, while he lives in a lodging of ten shillings a-week, with only one servant; while he dresses himself according to the season in cloth or in stuff, and has no one necessary attention to any thing but the bell. which calls to prayers twice a-day. I say, it would look like a fable to report, that this gentleman gives. away all which is the overplus of a great fortune, by

secret methods, to other men. If he has not the pomp of a numerous train, and of professors of service to him, he has every day he lives the conscience that the widow, the fatherless, the mourner, and the stranger, bless his unseen hand in their prayers. This humorist gives up all the compliments which people of his own condition could make to him, for the pleasure of helping the afflicted, supplying the needy, and befriending the neglected. This humorist keeps to himself much more than he wants, and gives a vast refuse of his superfluities to purchase heaven, and by freeing others from the temptations of worldly want, to carry a retinue with him thither.

Of all men who affect living in a particular way, next to this admirable character, I am the most enamored of Irus, whose condition will not admit of such largesses, and who perhaps would not be сараble of making them, if it were. Irus, though he is now turned of fifty, has not appeared in the world in his real character since five and twenty; at which age he ran out a small patrimony, and spent sometime after with rakes who had lived upon him. A course of ten years time passed in all the little alleys, bypaths, and sometimes open taverns and streets of this town, gave Irus a perfect skill in judging of the inclinations of mankind, and acting accordingly. He seriously considered he was poor, and the general horror which most men have of all who are in that condition. Irus judged very rightly, that while he could keep his poverty a secret, he should not feel. the weight of it: he improved this thought into an affectation of closeness and covetousness. Upon this one principle he resolved to govern his future life; and in the thirty-sixth year of his age he repaired to Long-Lane, and looked upon several dres

ses which hung there, deserted by their first masters and exposed to the purchase of the best bidder. At this place he exchanged his gay shabbiness of clothes, fit for a much younger man, to warm ones that would be decent for a much older one. Irus came out thoroughly equipped from head to foot, with a little oaken cane, in the form of a substantial man that did not mind his dress, turned of fifty. He had at this time fifty pounds in ready money; and in this habit, with this fortune, he took his present lodging in St. John-street, at the mansion-house of a taylor's widow, who washes, and can clear-starch his bands. From that time to this, he has kept the main stock, without alteration under or over, to the value of five pounds. He left off all his old acquaintance to a man, and all his arts of life, except the play of back-gammon, upon which he has more than bore his charges. Irus has, ever since he came into this neighborhood, given all the intimations he skilfully could, of being a close hunks with money: nobody comes to visit him, he receives no letters, and tells his money morning and evening. He has, from the public papers, a knowledge of what generally passes, shuns all discourses of money, but shrugs his shoulder when you talk of securities; he denies his being rich, with the air which all do who are vain of being so: he is the oracle of a neighboring justice of the peace, who meets him at the coffeehouse. The hopes that what he has must come to somebody, and that he has no heirs, have that effect wherever he is known, that he every day has three or four invitations to dine at different places, which he generally takes care to choose in such a manner, as not to seem inclined to the richer man. All the young men respect him, and say he is just the same