he worst of Men cannot deserve
Happiness.']

[Footnote 1: Unacknowledged, but doubtless by Addison, who took this
indirect way of answering Dennis. Addison's hand is further shown by the
addition made to the reprint.]

* * * * *

No. 549. Saturday, November 29, 1712. Addison.

'Quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici,
Laudo tamen--'

Juv.

I believe most People begin the World with a Resolution to withdraw from
it into a serious kind of Solitude or Retirement, when they have made
themselves easie in it. Our Unhappiness is, that we find out some Excuse
or other for deferring such our good Resolutions till our intended
Retreat is cut off by Death. But among all kinds of People there are
none who are so hard to part with the World, as those who are grown old
in the heaping up of Riches. Their Minds are so warped with their
constant Attention to Gain, that it is very difficult for them to give
their Souls another Bent, and convert them towards those Objects, which,
though they are proper for every Stage of Life, are so more especially
for the last. _Horace_ describes an old Usurer as so charmed with the
Pleasures of a Country Life, that in order to make a Purchase he called
in all his Mony; but what was the Event of it? Why in a very few Days
after he put it out again. I am engaged in this Series of Thought by a
Discourse which I had last Week with my worthy Friend Sir ANDREW
FREEPORT, a Man of so much natural Eloquence, good Sense, and Probity of
Mind, that I always hear him with a particular Pleasure. As we were
sitting together, being the sole remaining Members of our Club, Sir
ANDREW gave me an Account of the many busie Scenes of Life in which he
had been engaged, and at the same time reckoned up to me abundance of
those lucky Hits, which at another time he would have called pieces of
good Fortune; but in the Temper of Mind he was then, he termed them
Mercies, Favours of Providence, and Blessings upon an honest Industry.
Now, says he, you must know my good Friend, I am so used to consider my
self as Creditor and Debtor, that I often state my Accounts after the
same manner with regard to Heaven and my own Soul. In this case, when I
look upon the Debtor-side, I find such innumerable Articles, that I want
Arithmetick to cast them up; but when I look upon the Creditor-side, I
find little more than blank Paper. Now though I am