I intend to treat in more papers on this important article of life, and shall, therefore, make no reflection upon these histories, except that all whom I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim. No. 19. TUESDAY, MAY 22, 1750. _Dum modo causidicum, dum te modo rhetora fingis,_ _Et non decernis, Taure, quid esse velis,_ _Peleos et Priami transit, vel Nestoris, ætas;_ _Et fuerat serum jam tibi desinere.----_ _Eia age, rumpe moras: quo te sperabimus usque?_ _Dum, quid sis, dubitas, jam potes esse nihil._ MART. lib. ii. Ep. 64. To rhetorick now, and now to law inclin'd, Uncertain where to fix thy changing mind; Old Priam's age or Nestor's may be out, And thou, O Taures! still go on in doubt. Come then, how long such wavering shall we see? Thou may'st doubt on: thou now canst nothing be. F. LEWIS. It is never without very melancholy reflections, that we can observe the misconduct, or miscarriage, of those men, who seem, by the force of understanding, or extent of knowledge, exempted from the general frailties of human nature, and privileged from the common infelicities of life. Though the world is crowded with scenes of calamity, we look upon the general mass of wretchedness with very little regard, and fix our eyes upon the state of particular persons, whom the eminence of their qualities marks out from the multitude; as in reading an account of a battle, we seldom reflect on the vulgar heaps of slaughter, but follow the hero with our whole attention, through all the varieties of his fortune, without a thought of the thousands that are falling round him. With the same kind of anxious veneration I have for many years been making observations on the life of Polyphilus, a man whom all his acquaintances have, from his first appearance in the world, feared for the quickness of his discernment, and admired for the multiplicity of his attainments, but whose progress in life, and usefulness to mankind, has been hindered by the superfluity of his knowledge, and the celerity of his mind. Polyphilus was remarkable, at the school, for surpassing all his companions, without any visible application, and at the university was distinguished equally for his successful progress as well through the thorny mazes of science, as the flowery path of politer literature, without any strict confinement to hours of study, or remarkable forbearance of the common amusements of young men.