MR. RAMBLER,
Such is the tenderness or infirmity of many minds, that when any
affliction oppresses them, they have immediate recourse to lamentation
and complaint, which, though it can only be allowed reasonable when
evils admit of remedy, and then only when addressed to those from whom
the remedy is expected, yet seems even in hopeless and incurable
distresses to be natural, since those by whom it is not indulged,
imagine that they give a proof of extraordinary fortitude by suppressing
it.
I am one of those who, with the Sancho of Cervantes, leave to higher
characters the merit of suffering in silence, and give vent without
scruple to any sorrow that swells in my heart. It is therefore to me a
severe aggravation of a calamity, when it is such as in the common
opinion will not justify the acerbity of exclamation, or support the
solemnity of vocal grief. Yet many pains are incident to a man of
delicacy, which the unfeeling world cannot be persuaded to pity, and
which, when they are separated from their peculiar and personal
circumstances, will never be considered as important enough to claim
attention, or deserve redress.
Of this kind will appear to gross and vulgar apprehensions, the miseries
which I endured in a morning visit to Prospero, a man lately raised to
wealth by a lucky project, and too much intoxicated by sudden elevation,
or too little polished by thought and conversation, to enjoy his present
fortune with elegance and decency.
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