the only one of my friends, who, after having been once at my house, does not chuse to frequent it again.

My wife is not a whit less happy in acquiring friends than myself. Besides all her relations, of whom (for I chose a woman of family) she has a very great number, every lady she meets at visits, at church, or at the yearly races in our county-town, is so instantaneously charmed with her manners and conversation, that she finds it impossible to leave our part of the country, without doing herself the pleasure of waiting on Mrs Hearty at her own house. Mrs Hearty's friends are kind enough to give advice too, as well as mine. After such visits, I generally find some improvement in the furniture of my house, the dress of my wife, or the livery of my servants.

The attentions of our friends are sometimes carried farther than mere words or visits of compliment; yet, even then,

When I receive a

nany taxes upon us. present of a delicate salmon, or a nice haunch of venison, it is but a signal for all my good neighbours to come and eat at my expence; and some time ago, when a nephew of my wife, settled abroad, sent me an hogshead of excellent claret, it cost me, in entertainments for the honour of the liquor, what might have purchased a tun from the wine-merchant

After so many instances in which my friendships were hurtful to my fortune, I wished to hit on the way of making some of them beneficial to it. For this purpose, my wife and I have, for a good while past, been employed in looking out for some snug office, or reversion, to which my interest with several powerful friends might recommend me. But, somehow 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 sort are particularly liable. In the course of these solicitations, 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 considerable service 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 head-ach twice a week during the whole period of the canvas.

In short, Mr Mirror, I find I can af ford to keep myself in friends no longer. I mean to give them warning of this my

resolution as speedily as possible. 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 resolved henceforward, let people say of me what they will, to be no one's friend but my own. I am, &c.

JOHN HEARTY.

No. 80. SATURDAY, February 12, 1780.

Ex fumo dare lucem

Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.

HOR.

AUTHORS have been divided into two classes, the instructive and the entertaining; to which has been added a third, who mix, according to Horace, the utile dulci, and are, in his opinion, entitled to the highest degree of applause.

Readers complain, that in none of these departments is there, in modern writing, much pretension to originality. In science, they say, so much has been already discovered, that all a modern writer has left, is, to explain and enforce the systems of our predecessors; and, in literature, our fathers have so exhausted the acuteness of reasoning, the flashes of wit, the luxuriance of description, and the invention