friends might recommend me. But, fome how or other, our expectations have been always disappointed; not from any want of inclination in our friends to serve us, as we have been repeatedly assured, but from various unforeseen accidents, to which expectations of that fort are particularly liable. In the course of these folicitations, I was led to engage in the political interests of a gentleman, on whose influence I built the strongest hopes of success in my own schemes; and I flattered myself, that, from the friendly footing on which I stood with my neighbours, I might be of confiderable fervice to him. This, indeed, he is extremely ready to acknowledge, though he has never yet found an opportunity of returning the favour; but, in the mean time, it kept my table open to all his friends, as well as my own, and cost me, besides, a headach twice a-week during the whole period of the canvass. In short, Mr MIRROR, I find I can afford to keep myself in friends no longer. I mean to give them warning of this my resolution as fpeedily as poffible. Be so good, therefore, as inform such of them as read your paper, that I have shut my gates, locked my cellar, turned off my cook, disposed of my dogs, forgot my acquaintance, and am refolved henceforward, let people say of me what they will, to be no one's friend but my own. have TUESDAY, February 8. 1780, -Tanto major famæ fitis eft quam virtutis. JUVENAL, Sat. 10. To the AUTHOR of the MIRROR. SIR, TH HERE is, perhaps, no character in the world more frequent than that of your negatively good men; people who strictly conform to the laws of decency and good order in society, whose conduct is squared to the rules of honesty and morality, and yet who never did one virtuous or laudable action from the day of their birth. Men of this fort feem to confider life as a journey through a barba rous country, occupied by favages, and overspread with dangers in every quarter. Their only wish is to steer the safest course, to escape any hidden snares or precipices, and to avoid exasperating the enemy; but, to win them by offices of kindness, or attach them by real fer vices, they confider as a fruitless waste of time, a needless expence, and often a dangerous ex periment. It is not a little surprising, that these good ført of men should, by the decency of their exterior deportment, so far impose upon the world, as to glide on with ease and safety, to arrive often at riches and eminence, and, from being free of the censure of every species of open vice, to obtain not unfrequently the respect which is due to virtue. You, Mr MIRROR, like fome other rigid moralists, seem, from the general strain of your writings, to require something more towards the formation of a good man than the mere abfence of evil, or the mere livery of goodness. It must be allowed, however, that, by a fcrupulous obfervance of certain rules of decorum, and a timely use of the vocables of virtue, the exterior and visible part of the character is to be attained, which, for most of the useful purposes of life, seems to be quite fufficient. But, as there are still a few who go a little deeper, and are scrupulous enough to require a purity of heart as well as of manners, it is pity, that those fincere good people should lofe all recompenfe for the facrifice they make of many comfortable gratifications, cations, while they fee the rewards of virtue as certainly attained at a much smaller expence. From my concern for the few I have mentioned, I have been confidering whether it were not poffible to devise some means of unmasking those of the former character, some standard by which the two classes might be compared, or statical balance which should show the difference of weight and folidity of such objects as have a similar appearance. I think, Sir, I have been fuccessful, and shall now propose to you my plan. Imprimis, I lay it down as a rule, that men shall not be judged of by the actions they perform, but by fuch as they do not perform. Now, Sir, as those useful chronicles of facts, called news-papers, have hitherto been only the records of what men have been daily a-doing, I propose to publish a news-paper of a different kind, which shall contain the daily intelligence of all fuch things as are not done. For the benefit of fuch as chuse to encourage my undertaking, I send you a specimen of the work, which I can safely promife, and hereby engage, shall contain more in quantity than any other periodical register whatever. VOL. III. D "Saturday |