heart. He remembers many calamities incurred by folly, many
opportunities lost by negligence. The shades of the dead rise up before
him; and he laments the companions of his youth, the partners of his
amusements, the assistants of his labours, whom the hand of death has
snatched away.

When an offer was made to Themistocles of teaching him the art of
memory, he answered, that he would rather wish for the art of
forgetfulness. He felt his imagination haunted by phantoms of misery
which he was unable to suppress, and would gladly have calmed his
thoughts with some _oblivious antidote_. In this we all resemble one
another; the hero and the sage are, like vulgar mortals, overburdened by
the weight of life; all shrink from recollection, and all wish for an
art of forgetfulness[1].

[1] Read the sublime story of Sadak in search of the waters of oblivion
the Tales of the Genii. Those who have seen Martin's picture on the
subject, have failed almost to recognise the respective limits of
poetry and of painting.

No. 45. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1759.

There is in many minds a kind of vanity exerted to the disadvantage of
themselves; a desire to be praised for superior acuteness discovered
only in the degradation of their species, or censure of their country.

Defamation is sufficiently copious. The general lampooner of mankind may
find long exercise for his zeal or wit, in the defects of nature, the
vexations of life, the follies of opinion, and the corruptions of
practice. But fiction is easier than discernment; and most of these
writers spare themselves the labour of inquiry, and exhaust their
virulence upon imaginary crimes, which, as they never existed, can never
be amended.

That the painters find no encouragement among the English for many other
works than portraits, has been imputed to national selfishness. 'Tis
vain, says the satirist, to set before, any Englishman the scenes of
landscape, or the heroes of history; nature and antiquity are nothing in
his eye; he has no value but for himself, nor desires any copy but of
his own form.

Whoever is delighted with his own picture must derive his pleasure from
the pleasure of another. Every man is always present to himself, and
has, therefore, little need of his own resemblance, nor can desire it,
but for the sake of those whom he loves, and by whom he hopes to be
remembered. This use of the art is a natural and reasonable consequence
of affection; and