perhaps, nature has not proportioned the force of man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence. That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and the invention of those arts which are yet wanting to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore, universally discouraged, art and discovery can make no advances.1 Whatever is attempted without previous certainty of success, may be considered as a project, and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expose its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not understand, every project will be considered as madness and every great or new design will be censured as a project. Men, unaccustomed to reason and researches, think every enterprise impracticable, which is extended beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam 1 An old sea-faring man wrote to Swift that he had found out the longitude. The Dean replied "that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom ruined himself and his family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist lest one or other might happen to him."-Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xvii. 157. of water, as equally the dreams of mechanic lunacy; and would hear with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal,1 and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea. Those who have attempted much, have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chemistry are supposed to have risen from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir3: it is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit the world even by their miscarriages. "Their 1 No canal in England had as yet been made. origin dates from the year 1755, when an Act of Parliament was passed for constructing one from the Mersey to St. Helens."-Penny Cyclo., first ed., vi. 219. The Thames and Severn Canal was finished in 1789. 2 Johnson defines to contrive as to plan out; to excogitate. The sense of planning out successfully seems to be more modern than the date of his Dictionary. It was under Albuquerque that the Portuguese founded their rule in the East Indies, Johnson in his translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, p. 218, says that, according to Albuquerque's son, "nothing more was required to turn the Nile into a new channel than to dig through a little mountain that lies along it in the country of Prester John." 8 Johnson defines elixir as the liquor, or whatever it be, with which chemists hope to transmute metals to gold. perhaps, nature has not proportioned the force of man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence. That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and the invention of those arts which are yet wanting to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore, universally discouraged, art and discovery can make no advances.1 Whatever is attempted without previous certainty of success, may be considered as a project, and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expose its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not understand, every project will be considered as madness and every great or new design will be censured as a project. Men, unaccustomed to reason and researches, think every enterprise impracticable, which is extended beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam 1 An old sea-faring man wrote to Swift that he had found out the longitude. The Dean replied "that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom ruined himself and his family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist lest one or other might happen to him."-Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xvii. 157. of water, as equally the dreams of mechanic lunacy; and would hear with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal,1 and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea. Those who have attempted much, have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chemistry are supposed to have risen from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir3: it is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit the world even by their miscarriages. "Their 1 No canal in England had as yet been made. origin dates from the year 1755, when an Act of Parliament was passed for constructing one from the Mersey to St. Helens."-Penny Cyclo., first ed., vi. 219. The Thames and Severn Canal was finished in 1789. 2 Johnson defines to contrive as to plan out; to excogitate. The sense of planning out successfully seems to be more modern than the date of his Dictionary. It was under Albuquerque that the Portuguese founded their rule in the East Indies, Johnson in his translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, p. 218, says that, according to Albuquerque's son, "nothing more was required to turn the Nile into a new channel than to dig through a little mountain that lies along it in the country of Prester John." 8 Johnson defines elixir as the liquor, or whatever it be, with which chemists hope to transmute metals to gold. No. 108. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, Nobis quum simul occidit brevis lux, T may have been observed by every images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured; it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed. Of this kind are many descriptions which the poets have transcribed from each other, and their successors will probably copy to the end of time; which will continue to engage, or, as the French term it, to flatter the imagination, as long as human nature shall remain the same. When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the world, 1 Catullus, v. 5. |