who has got into a considerable station, shall immediately alter his manner of treating all his friends, and from that moment he is to deal with you as if he were your Fate. You are no longer to be consulted, even in matters which concern yourself; but your patron is of a species above you, and a free communication with you is not to be expected. This perhaps may be your condition all the while he bears office, and when that is at an end, you are as intimate as ever you were, and he will take it very ill if you keep the distance he prescribed you towards him in his grandeur. One would think this should be a behaviour a man could fall into with the worst grace imaginable; but they who know the world have seen it more than once. I have often, with secret pity, heard the same man who has professed his abhorrence against all kind of passive behaviour, lose minutes, hours, days, and years, in a fruitless attendance on one who had no inclination to befriend him. It is very much to be regretted, that the great have one particular privilege above the rest of the world, of being slow in receiving impressions of kindness, and quick in taking offence. The elevation above the rest of mankind, except in very great minds, makes men so giddy, that they do not see after the same manner they did before. Thus they despise their old friends, and strive to extend their interests to new pretenders. By this* means it often happens, that when you come to know how you lost such an employment, you will find the man who got it never dreamed of it; but, forsooth, he was to be surprised into it, or perhaps solicited to receive it. Upon such occasions as these a man may perhaps grow out of humour. If you are so, all mankind will fall in with the patron, and you are a hu * These. mourist and untractable if you are capable of being sour at a disappointment: but it is the same thing whether you do or do not resent ill usage, you will be used after the same manner; as some good mothers will be sure to whip their children till they cry and then whip them for crying. There are but two ways of doing any thing with great people, and those are by making yourself either considerable or agreeable. The former is not to be attained but by finding a way to live without them, or concealing that you want them; the latter is only by falling into their taste and pleasures. This is of all the employments in the world the most servile, except it happens to be of your own natural humour. For to be agreeable to another, especially if he be above you, is not to be possessed of such qualities and accomplishments as should render you agreeable in yourself, but such as make you agreeable in respect to him. An imitation of his faults, or a compliance, if not subservience to his vices, must be the measures of your conduct. When it comes to that, the unnatural state a man lives in, when the patron pleases, is ended; and his guilt and complaisance are objected to him, though the man who rejects him for his vices was not only his partner, but seducer. Thus the client, like a young woman who has given up the innocence which made her charming, has not only lost his time, but also the virtue which could render him capable of resenting the injury which is done him. for It would be endless to recount the tricks of turning you off from themselves to persons who have less power to serve you, the art of being sorry such an unaccountable accident in your behaviour, that such a one, who, perhaps, has never heard of you, opposes your advancement; and if you any thing more than ordinary in you, you are have NO. 214. flattered with a whisper, that it is no wonder people are so slow in doing for a man of your talents, and the like. After all this treatment I must still add the pleasantest insolence of all, which I have once or twice seen; to wit, that when a silly rogue has thrown away one part in three of his life in unprofitable attendance, it is taken wonderfully ill that he withdraws, and is resolved to employ the rest for himself. When we consider these things, and reflect upon so many honest natures, which one who makes observation of what passes, may have seen, that have miscarried by such sort of applications, it is too melancholy a scene to dwell upon; therefore I shall take another opportunity to discourse of good patrons, and distinguish such as have done their duty to those who have depended upon them, and were not able to act without their favour. Worthy patrons are like Plato's Guardian Angels, who are always doing good to their wards; but negligent patrons are like Epicurus's gods, that lie lolling on the clouds, and instead of blessings, pour down storms and tempests on the heads of those that are offering incense to them*. T *The Spectator has not justly represented here the gods of Epicurus: they were supposed to be indolent and uninterested in the affairs of men, but not malignant or cruel beings. No. 215. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1711. - Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros. OVID DE PONTO, ii. 9. 47. Ingenuous arts, where they an entrance find, I CONSIDER a human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties, till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein, that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which, without such helps, are never able to make their appearance. If my reader will give me leave to change the allusion so soon upon him, I shall make use of the same instance to illustrate the force of education, which Aristotle has brought to explain his doctrine of substantial forms, when he tells us that a statue lies hid in a block of marble; and that the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone, the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great, man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have dis-interred, and have brought to light. I am, therefore, much delighted with reading the accounts of savage nations, and with contemplating those virtues which are wild and uncultivated; to see courage exerting itself in fierceness, resolution in obstinacy, wisdom in cunning, patience in sullenness and despair. Men's passions operate variously, and appear in different kinds of actions, according as they are more or less rectified and swayed by reason. When one hears of negroes, who, upon the death of their masters, or upon changing their service, hang themselves upon the next tree, as it frequently happens in our American plantations, who can forbear admiring their fidelity, though it expresses itself in so dreadful a manner? What might not that savage greatness of soul which appears in these poor wretches on many occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what colour of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species; that we should not put them upon the common foot of humanity; that we should only set an insignificant fine upon the man who murders them; nay, that we should as much as in us lies, cut them off from the prospects of happiness in another world as well as in this, and deny them that which we look upon as the proper means for attaining it? Since I am engaged on this subject, I cannot forbear mentioning a story which I have lately heard, and which is so well attested, that I have no manner of reason to suspect the truth of it. I may call it a kind of wild tragedy that passed about twelve years ago at Saint Christopher's, one of our British Leeward Islands. The negroes who were the persons concerned in it, were all them the slaves of a gentleman who is now in England. This gentleman, among his negroes, had a young woman, who was looked upon as a most extraordi |