But I shall find myself in danger of becoming ridiculous, amidst these scruples about an entire ingenuousness to a confidential friend or two, while I glance into the literary world, and observe the number of historians of their own lives, who magnanimously throw the complete cargo, both of their vanities and their vices, before the whole public. Men who can gaily laugh at themselves for ever having even pretended to goodness; who can tell of having sought consolation for the sorrows of bereaved tenderness, in the recesses of debauchery; whose language betrays that they deem a spirited course of profligate adventures a much finer thing than the stupidity of vulgar virtues, and who seem to claim the sentiments with which we regard an unfortunate hero, for the disasters into which these adventures led them; venal partisans whose talents would hardly have been bought, if their venom had not made up the deficiency; profane travelling coxcombs; players, and the makers of immoral plays — all can narrate the course of a contaminated life with the most ingenuous hardihood. Even courtezans, grieved at the excess of modesty with which the age is afflicted, have endeavoured to diminish the evil, by presenting themselves before the public in their narratives, in a manner very analogous to that in which the Lady Godiva is said to have consented, from a most generous inducement, to pass through the city of Coventry. They can gravely relate, perhaps with intermingled paragraphs and verses of plaintive sensibility, (a kind of weeds in which sentiment without principle apes and mocks mourning virtue,) the whole nauseous detail of their transitions from proprietor to proprietor. They can tell of the precautions for meeting some "illustrious personage," accomplished in depravity even in his early youth, with the proper adjustment of time and circumstances to save him the scandal of such a meeting; the

hour when they crossed the river in a boat; the arrangements about money; the kindness of the "personage" at one time, his contemptuous neglect at another; and every thing else that can turn the compassion with which we deplore their first misfortunes and errors, into detestation of the effrontery which can take to itself a merit in proclaiming the commencement sequel, and all, to the wide world.

With regard to all the classes of self-describers who thus think the publication of their vices necessary to crown their fame, one should wish there were some public special mark and brand of emphatic reprobation, to reward this tribute to public morals. Men that court the pillory for the pleasure of it, ought to receive the honour of it too, in all those contumelious salutations which suit the merits of vice grown proud of its impudence. They who "glory in their shame" should, like other distinguished personages, 66 pay a tax for being eminent." Yet I own the public itself is to be consulted in this case; for if the public welcomes such productions, it shows there are readers who feel themselves akin to the writers, and it would be hard to deprive congenial souls of the luxury of their appropriate sympathies. If such is the taste, it proves that a considerable portion of the public deserves just that kind of respect for its virtue, which is very significantly implied in this confidence of its favour.

One is indignant at the cant pretence and title of Con*essions, sometimes adopted by these exhibiters of their own disgrace; as if it were to be believed, that penitence and humiliation would ever excite men to call thousands to witness a needless disclosure of what oppresses them with grief and shame. If they would be mortified that only a few readers should think it worth while to see them thus performing the work of self-degradation, like the fetid heroes of the Dunciad

in a ditch, would it be because they are desirous that the greatest possible number should have the benefit of being averted from vice through disgust and contempt of them as its example? No, this title of Confessions is only a nominal deference to morality, necessary indeed to be paid, because mankind never forget to insist, that the name of virtue shall be respected, even while vice obtains from them that practical favour on which these writers place their reliance for toleration or applause. This slight homage being duly rendered and occasionally repeated, they trust in the character of the community that they shall not meet the kind of condemnation, and they have no desire for the kind of pity, which would strictly belong to criminals: nor is it any part or effect of their penitence, to wish that society may be made better by seeing in them how odious are folly and vice. They are glad the age continues such, that even they may have claims to be praised; and honour of some kind, and from some quarter, is the object to which they aspire, and the consequence which they promise themselves. Let them once be convinced, that they make such exhibitions under the absolute condition of subjecting themselves irredeemably to opprobrium, as in Miletus the persons infected with a rage for destroying themselves were by a solemn decree assured of being exposed in naked ignominy after the perpetration of the deed-and these literarv suicides will be heard of no more.

Rousseau has given a memorable example of this voluntary humiliation. And he has very honestly assigned the degree of contrition which accompanied the self-inflicted penance, in the declaration that this document with all its dishonours, shall be presented in his justification before the Eternal Judge. If we could, in any case, pardon the kind of ingenuousness which he has displayed, it would certainly be in the disclosure

F

of a mind so wonderfully singular as his.* We are almost willing to have such a being preserved to all the unsightly minutiæ and anomalies of its form, to be placed, as an unique in the moral museum of the world.

Rousseau's impious reference to the Divine Judge, leads me to suggest, as I conclude, the consideration, that the history of each man's life, though it should not be written by himself or by any mortal hand, is thus far unerringly recorded, will one day be finished in truth, and one other day yet to come, will be brought to a final estimate. A mind accustomed to grave reflections is sometimes led involuntarily into a curiosity of awful conjecture, which asks, What are those words which I should read this night, if, as to Belshazzar, a hand of prophetic shade were sent to write before me the identical expression, or the momentous import, of the sentence in which that final estimate will be declared ?

There is indeed one case in which this kind of honesty would be so signally useful to mankind, that it would deserve almost to be canonized into a virtue. If statesmen, including monarchs, courtiers, ministers, senators, popular leaders, ambassadors, &c., would publish, before they go in the triumph of virtue, to the "last audit," or leave to be published after they are gone, each a frank exposition of motives, intrigues, cabals, and manœuvres, the worship which mankind have rendered to power and rank would cease to be, what it has always been, a mere blind superstition, when such rational grounds should come to be shown for the homage. It might contribute to a happy exorcism of that spirit which has never suffered nations to be at peace; while it would give an altered and less delusive character to history. Great service in this way, but unfortunately late, is in the course of being rendered in our times, by the publication of private memoirs, written by persons connected or acquainted with those of the highest order. Let any one look at the exhibition of the very centre of the dignity and power of a great nation, as given in Pepys's Memoirs, though with the omission in that publication, as I am informed on the best authority, of sundry passages contained in the manuscript, of such a colour that their production would have exceeded the very utmost license allowable by public decorum. I need not revert to works now comparatively ancient, such as Lord Melbourn's Diary.

ESSAY II.

ON DECISION OF CHARACTER.

LETTER I.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

We have several times talked of this bold quality, and acknowledged its great importance. Without it, a human being, with powers at best but feeble and surrounded by innumerable things tending to perplex, to divert, and to frustrate, their operations, is indeed a pitiable atom, the sport of divers and casual impulses. It is a poor and disgraceful thing, not to be able to reply, with some degree of certainty, to the simple questions, What will you be? What will you do?

A little acquaintance with mankind will supply numberless illustrations of the importance of this qualification. You will often see a person anxiously hesitating a long time between different, or opposite determinations, though impatient of the pain of such a state, and ashamed of the debility. A faint impulse of preference alternates toward the one, and toward the other; and the mind, while thus held in a trembling balance, is vexed that it cannot get some new thought, or feeling, or motive; that it has not more sense, more resolution, more of any thing that would save it from envying even the decisive instinct of brutes. It wishes