NUMB. 44. SATURDAY, February 17, 1759.

ME

EMORY is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent ufe, or rather that of which the agency is inceffant or perpetual. Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation. Judgment and ratiocination suppose something already known, and draw their decifions only from experience. Imagination felects ideas from the treafures of remembrance, and produces novelty only by varied combinations. We do not even form conjectures of diftant, or anticipations of future events, but by concluding what is poffible from what is past.

The two offices of memory are collection and diftribution; by one images are accumulated, and by the other produced for ufe. Collection is always the employment of our first years, and diftribution commonly that of our advanced age.

To collect and repofite the various forms of things, is far the most pleasing part of mental occupation. We are naturally delighted with novelty, and there is a time when all that we fee is new. When first we enter into the world, whitherfoever we turn our eyes, they meet knowledge with pleafure at her fide; every diverfity of nature pours ideas in upon the foul; neither fearch nor labour are neceffary; we have nothing more to do than to open our eyes, and curiofity is gratified.

Much of the pleasure which the firft furvey of the world affords, is exhaufted before we are confcious of our own felicity, or able to compare our condition with fome other poffible ftate. We have therefore few traces of the joy of our earliest difcoveries; yet we all remember a time when nature had fo many untafted gratifications, that every excursion gave delight which can now be found no longer, when the noife of a torrent, the ruftle of a wood, the fong of birds, or the play of lambs, had power to fill the attention, and fufpend all perception of the courfe of time.

But thefe eafy pleafures are foon at an end; we have seen in a very little time fo much, that we call out for new objects of observation, and endeavour to find variety in books and life. But ftudy is laborious, and not always fatisfactory; and converfation has its pains as well as pleafures; we are willing to learn, but not willing to be taught; we are pained by ignorance, but pained yet more by another's knowledge.

From the vexation of pupillage men commonly fet themselves free about the middle of life, by fhutting up the avenues of intelligence, and refolving to rest in their prefent ftate; and they, whose ardour of enquiry continues longer, find themfelves infenfibly forfaken by their inftructors. As every man advances in life, the proportion between thofe that are younger, and that are older than himself, is continually changing; and he that has lived half a century, finds few that do not require from him that information which he once expected from those that went before him,

Then it is that the magazines of memory are opened, and the ftores of accumulated knowledge are displayed by vanity or benevolence, or in honeft commerce of mutual intereft. Every man wants others, and is therefore glad when he is wanted by them. And as few men will endure the labour of intense meditation without neceffity, he that has learned enough for his profit or his honour, feldom endeavours after further acquifitions.

The pleasure of recollecting speculative notions would not be much lefs than that of gaining them, if they could be kept pure and unmingled with the paffages of life, but fuch is the neceffary concatenation of our thoughts, that good and evil are linked together, and no pleasure recurs but affociated with pain. Every revived idea reminds us of a time when fomething was enjoyed that is now loft, when fome hope was not yet blasted, when some purpose had yet not languished into fluggishness or indiffer

ence.

Whether it be that life has more vexations than comforts, or, what is in the event juft the fame, that evil makes deeper impreffion than good, it is certain that few can review the time paft without heaviness of heart. He remembers many calamities incurred by folly, many opportunities loft by negligence. The fhades of the dead rife up before him; and he laments the companions of his youth, the partners of his amufements, the affiftants of his labours, whom the hand of death has fnatched away.

When an offer was made to Themistocles of teaching him the art of memory, he answered, that he VOL. VIII. would

N

would rather wish for the art of forgetfulness. He felt his imagination haunted by phantoms of mifery which he was unable to fupprefs, and would gladly have calmed his thoughts with fome oblivious antidote. In this we all resemble one another; the hero and the fage are, like vulgar mortals, overburthened by the weight of life, all shrink from recollection, and all wifh for an art of forgetfulness.

NUMB. 45. SATURDAY, February 24, 1759.

TH

HERE is in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the difadvantage of themselves; a defire to be praised for fuperior acutenefs discovered only in the degradation of their fpecies, or cenfure of their country.

Defamation is fufficiently copious. The general lampooner of mankind may find long exercise for his zeal or wit in the defects of nature, the vexations of life, the follies of opinion, and the corruptions of practice. But fiction is eafier than difcernment; and most of these writers fpare themfelves the labour of enquiry, and exhaust their virulence upon imaginary crimes, which, as they never exifted, can never be amended.

That the painters find no encouragement among the English for many other works than portraits, has been imputed to national felfishness. 'Tis vain, fays the fatirift, to fet before any Englishman the

fcenes

fcenes of landscape, or the heroes of history; nature and antiquity are nothing in his eye; he has no value but for himself, nor defires any copy but of his own form.

Whoever is delighted with his own picture must derive his pleasure from the pleasure of another. Every man is always prefent to himself, and has, therefore, little need of his own resemblance, nor can defire it, but for the fake of thofe whom he loves, and by whom he hopes to be remembered. This ufe of the art is a natural and reasonable confequence of affection; and though, like other human actions, it is often complicated with pride, yet even fuch pride is more laudable, than that by which palaces are covered with pictures, that, however excellent, neither imply the owner's virtue nor excite it.

Genius is chiefly exerted in hiftorical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often loft in the obfcurity of his fubject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greateft is not always beft. I should grieve to fee Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddeffes, to empty fplendor and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the abfent, and continuing the presence of the dead.

Yet in a nation great and opulent there is room, and ought to be patronage, for an art like that of painting through all its diverfities; and it is to be wifhed, that the reward now offered for an hiftorical picture may excite an honeft emulation, and give beginning to an English School.