but I remember that, among other marriages, it was propofed, that Captain N. should be married to Mifs Cauftic, though Maria, grafping my hand, the tear half starting in her eye, objected to it, because it would be wrong to deprive the Colonel of his fifter. With regard to your correfpondent Hortenfius,, the youngest of my married daughters, looking at her husband with inexpreffible good humour, faid, that if she were not already tied, the believed he could have married him herself.

Another fource of our entertainment in reading your papers, is a fufpicion which I fee prevails in. the company, that fome of its members are your correfpondents, and have written in the Lounger. This fufpicion gives birth to many a joke; and it is diverting to fee upon whom the conjecture of having written this or that paper falls, and the different devices which are thought of to discover where the truth lies. Little do they imagine that their old father is at this moment employed as your correspondent.

But I must conclude: I am afraid ere this you will have thought, that I have one quality of an old man about me that of being a great talker. I fhall only add, that if you think this account of a happy family worth your insertion, it will

afford

afford, on the evening of the Saturday on which it is published, a good deal of entertainment to the family-party I have defcribed.

AURELIUS.

I know not whether it be from vanity, or from fome better motive, that I have given this letter to the public. I must own, that I have felt myfelf very fenfibly gratified by the manner in which my papers are received in the family of Aurelius. It is to perfons in the ordinary stations of life that the Lounger is addreffed. The learned are perhaps above it; the vulgar, those who are employed in the fervile offices of life, below it. But as long as I can give one half-hour's amusement, mixed perhaps with a little inftruction, to fuch a family as that of Aurelius, it shall neither be the indifference of the learned, nor the neglect of the multitude, which fhall induce me to discontinue my labours.

A.

N° 58. SATURDAY, March. 11. 1786.

Inter fylvas Academi querere verum. HOR.

To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER.

SIR,

A

MONG the various complaints which, I

obferve from your papers, your correfpondents occafionally make to you, you may not, perhaps, have met with any more whimsical, or which, at first fight, will appear more unjust than mine. I have, thank God, very few evils, either real or imaginary, in my lot; I am neither too rich nor too poor to be contented; I am neither fo dull as not to be pleased with a good thing, nor fo refined as 'to be proud of finding faults in it; I am neither nervous in my body, nor tremblingly alive in my mind: One thing only plagues and vexes me, and plagues and vexes the whole family in which I live. The evil of which I complain, Mr Lounger, is, I am told, one of the VOL. II.

T

"first

"first of virtues "The evil I complain of is Truth.

You must know I have a fifter married to a very good and a very learned gentleman, in whofe family, by his and his wife's preffing invitation, I have lived ever fince his marriage; and for feveral years no fet of people could be happier. But of laté my brother-in-law has become a philofopher, and is perpetually hunting after Truth; and a pretty chace fhe leads him! His poring over books in queft of her would only weaken his own eyes, and break his own reft; but his running after her wherever fhe is to be found, at all times, and in all companies, breaks the rest of every body around him. With my fifter and me he has but little play for his humour. His wife, indeed, is of fo gentle and complying a tempel, that she never difputes his propofitions, as he calls them. I am not quite fo yielding; and we have now and then little bouts at an argument: But with our guests and visitors he is conftantly at it; and I believe in my confcience he often chufes companies as your chefs-players do, because they are nearly matches at their favourite game; having obferved that of late, fince he took to this kind of fport, he generally invites thofe people ofteneft who argue ftoutest with him when they come. For thefe fame truth-hunters,

Mr

Mr Lounger, feem, like true sportsmen, to find little pleasure in the chace when it is foon run down, or when there are no hazards in the way. They like to leap hedges and ditches; to scramble amidst briers and thorns; to fplafh through mire and bog; to be a terrible long while before they come to the end of their labour; and at laft, as I am told it often happens in the field, they fometimes find themselves just where they fet

out.

But, as the frogs in the fable fay, "This is fport to them, but death to us." You cannot imagine what mifchiefs and inconveniences it produces in our family. Before this difeafe of difputation took hold of him, Mr Category was attentive to his affairs, kind to his friends, polite to his acquaintance, and one of the best hufbands. and fathers in the world; but now he neglects his bufinefs, quarrels with his relations, is rude to every body about him, and minds his wife and children no more than if they were fo many broomsticks. Indeed I begin to be of opinion, that my fifter has loft a good deal of his affection, from that fame meekness of spirit which I mentioned her to be poffeffed of; and I think he likes me much better fince I grew tired of yielding every point, as I used to do for peace fake, and now and then wrangle a little with him.