Page:Johnson - Rambler 3.djvu/23

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Numb. 108. Saturday, March 30, 1751.

Sapere aude, Incipe. Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis : at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.	Hor.
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay, Till the whole stream, which stopp'd him should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.	Cowley.

 

AN ancient poet, unreasonably discontented at the present state of things, which his system of opinions obliged him to represent in its worst form, has observed of the earth, "that its greater part is covered by the uninhabitable ocean; that of the rest some is encumbered with naked mountains, and some lost under barren sands; some scorched with unintermitted heat, and some petrified with perpetual frost; so that only a few regions remain for the production of fruits, the pasture of cattle, and the accommodation of man."

The same observation may be transferred to the time allotted us in our present state. When we have deducted all that is absorbed in sleep, all that is inevitably appropriated to the demands of nature, or irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given up in the reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn from us by the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by lassitude