whether any such being interfered in the case, or, indeed, whether
there be any such being in the universe, is a matter which I by no
means presume to determine in the affirmative. To speak a bold truth,
I am, after much mature deliberation, inclined to suspect that the
public voice hath, in all ages, done much injustice to Fortune, and
hath convicted her of many facts in which she had not the least
concern. I question much whether we may not, by natural means, account
for the success of knaves, the calamities of fools, with all the
miseries in which men of sense sometimes involve themselves, by
quitting the directions of Prudence, and following the blind guidance
of a predominant passion; in short, for all the ordinary phenomena
which are imputed to Fortune; whom, perhaps, men accuse with no less
absurdity in life, than a bad player complains of ill luck at the game
of chess.

But if men are sometimes guilty of laying improper blame on this
imaginary being, they are altogether as apt to make her amends by
ascribing to her honours which she as little deserves. To retrieve the
ill consequences of a foolish conduct, and by struggling manfully with
distress to subdue it, is one of the noblest efforts of wisdom and
virtue. Whoever, therefore, calls such a man fortunate, is guilty of
no less impropriety in speech than he would be who should call the
statuary or the poet fortunate who carved a Venus or who writ an
Iliad.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other; and the great
incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than
the several members of a fine statue or a noble poem. The critics in
all these are not content with seeing anything to be great without
knowing why and how it came to be so. By examining carefully the