But there is another species of projectors, to whom I should willingly conciliate mankind; whose ends are generally laudable, and whose labours are innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature, or contriving new works of art: but who are yet persecuted with incessant obloquy, and whom the universal contempt with which they are treated often debars from that success which their industry would obtain, if it were permitted to act without opposition.

They who find themselves inclined to censure new undertakings, only because they are new, should consider that the folly of projection is very seldom the folly of a fool; it is commonly the ebullition of a capacious mind, crowded with variety of knowledge, and heated with intenseness of thought; it proceeds often from the consciousness of uncommon powers, from the confidence of those who, having already done much, are easily persuaded that they can do more. When Rowley had completed the Orrery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle had exhausted the secrets of vulgar chemistry, he turned his thoughts to the work of transmutation.

A projector generally unites those qualities which have the fairest claim to veneration, extent of knowledge and greatness of design: it was said of Catiline, "immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat." Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects, though they differ in their morals; they all fail by attempting things beyond their power, by despising vulgar attainments, and aspiring to performances, to which, perhaps, nature has not proportioned the force of man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence.

That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such

men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and the invention of those arts which are yet wanting to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore, universally discouraged, art and discovery can make no advances. Whatever is attempted without previous certainty of success may be considered as a project, and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expose its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not understand, every project will be considered as madness, and every great or new design will be censured as a project. Men, unaccustomed to reason and researches, think every enterprise impracticable which is extended beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many that presume to laugh at projectors would consider a flight through the air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the steam of water, as equally the dreams of mechanic lunacy; and would hear, with little negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning the Nile into the Red Sea.

Those who have attempted much have seldom failed to perform more than those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable preparations of chemistry are supposed to have arisen from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir; it is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit the world, even by their miscarriages.

T.

No. 100. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1753.

Nemo repentè fuit turpissimus.

Juv.

No man e'er reach'd the heights of vice at first. TATE.

"TO THE ADVENTURER.

"SIR, "THOUGH the characters of men have, perhaps, been essentially the same in all ages, yet their external appearance has changed with other peculiarities of time and place, and they have been distinguished by different names, as new modes of expression have prevailed: a periodical writer, therefore, who catches the picture of evanescent life, and shows the deformity of follies which in a few years will be so changed as not to be known, should be careful to express the character when he describes the appearance, and to connect it with the name by which it then happens to be called. You have frequently used the terms buck and blood, and have given some account of the characters which are thus denominated; but you have not considered them as the last stages of a regular progression, nor taken any notice of those which precede them. Their dependence upon each other is, indeed, so little known that many suppose them to be distinct and collateral classes, formed by persons of opposite interests, tastes, capacities, and dispositions: the scale, however, consists of eight degrees: Greenhorn, Jemmy, Jessamy, Smart, Honest Fellow, Joyous Spirit, Buck, and Blood. As I have myself passed through the whole series, I shall explain each station by a short account of my life, remarking the periods when my character changed its

denomination, and the particular incidents by which the change was produced.

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My father was a wealthy farmer in Yorkshire; and when I was near eighteen years of age, he brought me up to London, and put me apprentice to a considerable shopkeeper in the city. There was an awkward modest simplicity in my manner, and a reverence of religion and virtue in my conversation. The novelty of the scene that was now placed before me, in which there were innumerable objects that I never conceived to exist, rendered me attentive and credulous; peculiarities which, without a provincial accent, a slouch in my gait, a long lank head of hair, an unfashionable suit of drab coloured cloth, would have denominated me a Greenhorn, or, in other words, a country put very green.

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Green, then, I continued, even in externals, near two years; and in this state I was the object of universal contempt and derision; but, being at length wearied with merriment and insult, I was very sedulous to assume the manners and appearance of those who, in the same station, were better treated. I had already improved greatly in my speech; and my father having allowed me thirty pounds a year for apparel and pocket money, the greater part of which I had saved, I bespoke a suit of clothes of an eminent city tailor, with several waistcoats and breeches, and two frocks for a change I cut off my hair, and procured a brown bob perriwig of Wilding, of the same colour, with a single row of curls just round the bottom, which I wore very nicely combed, and without powder: my hat, which had been cocked with great exactness in an equilateral triangle, I discarded, and purchased one of a more fashionable size, the fore corner of which projected near two inches further

:

than those on each side, and was moulded into the shape of a spout: I also furnished myself with a change of white thread stockings, took care that my pumps were varnished every morning with a new German blacking ball; and, when I went out, carried in my hand a little switch, which, as it has been long appendent to the character that I had just assumed, has taken the same name, and is called a Jemmy.

"I soon perceived the advantage of this transformation. My manner had not, indeed, kept pace with my dress; I was still modest and diffident, temperate and sober, and consequently still subject to ridicule but I was now admitted into company, from which I had before been excluded by the rusticity of my appearance; I was rallied and encouraged by turns; and I was instructed both by precept and example. Some offers were made of carrying me to a house of private entertainment, which then I absolutely refused; but I soon found the way into the playhouse, to see the two last acts and the farce here I learned that by breaches of chastity no man was thought to incur either guilt or shame; but that, on the contrary, they were essentially necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. I soon copied the original, which I found to be universally admired, in my morals, and made some farther approaches to it in my dress I suffered my hair to grow long enough to comb back over the foretop of my wig, which, when I sallied forth to my evening amusement, I changed to a queue; I tied the collar of my shirt with half an ell of black ribbon, which appeared under my neckcloth; the fore corner of my hat was considerably elevated and shortened, so that it no longer resembled a spout, but the corner of a minced pie: my waistcoat was edged with a narrow lace, my stockings