higher powers, as we feel the miseries of those who are nearer
upon a level with ourselves. The revolution and fall of empires
affect us less, than the distresses of a private family. Homer
himself had wandered like Ulysses, and although by the force
of imagination he so nobly described the din of battle, and
the echoing contests of fiery princes, yet his heart still
sensibly felt the indigence of the wandering Ithacan, and
the contemptuous treatment shewn to the beggar, whose soul
and genius deserved a better fate."

This having confirmed me in my opinion, I set about the following
dramatic attempt upon that horrid vice of Gaming, of all others
the most pernicious to society, and growing every day more and
more predominant amongst all ranks of people, so that even the
examples of a Prince, and Princess, pious, virtuous, and every way
excellent, as ever a people were blessed with, contrary to the
well-known axiom,
Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis,
have had but small effect.


I finished it, part in prose, and part in blank verse, in about six
weeks, and having shewn it to several of my literary acquaintance,
the far greater part were of opinion, that it should be entirely
one, or the other; but, as the scene was laid in private life, and
chiefly among those of middling rank, it ought to be entirely prose;
and that, not much exalted; and accordingly, with no small labour,
I turned it all into prose. But in some short time after, having
communicated this to Dr. Samuel Johnson, his words (as well as I
remember) were, "That he could hardly consider a prose Tragedy as