"Can you be serious, then in advising me to quit all future intercourse with an element, that has for some years, with all its dangers and losses, afforded to your humble servant attractions, far more powerful than those of Apollo! Formerly, when I wrote poetry, most of those that attended to it, would not allow my verses to be good. I gave credit to what I deemed the popular opinion, and made a safe retreat in due time, to the solitary wastes of Neptune. I am not, however, inclined to believe people so readily now, when they alledge my vessel is not sound, and when several gentlemen, for reasons best known to themselves, and perhaps not over willing to risque the uncertainties of the world to come, effect to doubt of her ability to waft their carcases in safety. But my ambition is greatly concerned in this matter: a schooner is confided to my care, humble, indeed, when compared to those lofty piles which I have seen you so much admire, but which is, nevertheless, really capable of an European, nay of an India voyage. Read all history, ransack libraries, call tradition to your aid, search all records, examine a million of manuscripts on vellum, on parchment, on paper, on marble, on what you please, and I defy you to find the most distant hint of any _poet_, in any age or country, from Hesiod down to Peter Pindar, having been trusted with the controul or possession of anything fit to be mentioned or compared with the same barque, which you say, _I have the misfortune to command._ "To be serious: misfortune ought to be only the topic of such men as do not think or reason with propriety, upon the nature of things. Some writer says, it is but another name for carelessness or inattention: Though that may not at all times be the case, it is in the power of every man to place himself beyond the supposed baneful influence of this inexorable deity, by _assuming_ a dignity of mind, (if it be not the gift of nature) that will, in the end, get the better of the untoward events, that may frequently cross our best purposes. Indeed, the _sea_ is the _best_ school for philosophy (I mean of the moral kind); in thirteen or fourteen years' acquaintance with this element, I am convinced a man ought to imbibe more of your right genuine _stoical_ stuff, than could be gained in half a century on shore.--I must add that, be our occupations what they may, or our fortunes what they will, there is a certain delectable, inexpressible satisfaction in now and then encountering the rubs and disasters of life, and I am entirely of the opinion which (says Dr. Langhorne) "Weakness wrote in Petrarch's gentle strain, When once he own'd at love's unfavouring shrine _A thousand pleasures art not worth one pain_!"