.

In my fiftieth year I began to suspect that the time of travelling was
past, and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power,
and indulge myself in domestick pleasures. But at fifty no man easily
finds a woman beautiful as the Houries, and wise as Zobeide. I inquired
and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made
me ashamed of gazing upon girls. I had now nothing left but retirement,
and for retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me from
publick employment.

Such was my scheme, and such has been its consequence. With an
insatiable thirst for knowledge, I trifled away the years of
improvement; with a restless desire of seeing different countries, I
have always resided in the same city; with the highest expectation of
connubial felicity, I have lived unmarried; and with unalterable
resolutions of contemplative retirement, I am going to die within the
walls of Bagdat.

No. 102. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1760.

It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure. What is
done from necessity is so often to be done when against the present
inclination, and so often fills the mind with anxiety, that an habitual
dislike steals upon us, and we shrink involuntarily from the remembrance
of our task. This is the reason why almost every one wishes to quit his
employment; he does not like another state, but is disgusted with his
own.

From this unwillingness to perform more than is required of that which
is commonly performed with reluctance, it proceeds that few authors
write their own lives. Statesmen, courtiers, ladies, generals and seamen
have given to the world their own stories, and the events with which
their different stations have made them acquainted. They retired to the
closet as to a place of quiet and amusement, and pleased themselves with
writing, because they could lay down the pen whenever they were weary.
But the author, however conspicuous, or however important, either in the
publick eye or in his own, leaves his life to be related by his
successors, for he cannot gratify his vanity but by sacrificing his
ease.

It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords
no matter for a narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious
life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common
condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has
hopes and fears, expectations and disappointme