--------Naso suspendis adunco.

HOR. Lib. i. Sat. vi. 5.


On me you turn the nose.--------

THERE are many vexatious accidents and uneasy
situations which raise little compassion for
the sufferer, and which no man but those whom
they immediately distress can regard with
seriousness. Petty mischiefs, that have no influence on
futurity, nor extend their effects to the rest of life,
are always seen with a kind of malicious pleasure.
A mistake or embarrassment, which for the present
moment fills the face with blushes, and the mind
with confusion, will have no other effect upon those
who observe it, than that of convulsing them with
irresistible laughter. Some circumstances of misery
are so powerfully ridiculous, that neither kindness
nor duty can withstand them; they bear down love,
interest, and reverence, and force the friend, the
dependent, or the child, to give way to instantaneous
motions of merriment.

Among the principal of comick calamities, may
be reckoned the pain which an author, not yet
hardened into insensibility, feels at the onset of a
furious critick, whose age, rank, or fortune, gives him