Has toties optata exegit gloria poenas. JUV. Sat. x. 187.

Such fate pursues the votaries of praise.


TO THE ADVENTURER.

SIR,

Fleet Prison, Feb. 24.

TO a benevolent disposition, every state of life
will afford some opportunities of contributing to
the welfare of mankind. Opulence and splendour are
enabled to dispel the cloud of adversity, to dry up the
tears of the widow and the orphan, and to increase
the felicity of all around them: their example will
animate virtue, and retard the progress of vice. And
even indigence and obscurity, though without power
to confer happiness, may at least prevent misery,
and apprize those who are blinded by their passions,
that they are on the brink of irremediable calamity.

Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering
others from that folly which has embittered my
own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER
from the dreary mansions of wretchedness
and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully
constructed, as to fly open for the reception of
strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of