SIR,

Though you seem to have taken a view sufficiently extensive of the
miseries of life, and have employed much of your speculation on mournful
subjects, you have not yet exhausted the whole stock of human
infelicity. There is still a species of wretchedness which escapes your
observation, though it might supply you with many sage remarks, and
salutary cautions.

I cannot but imagine the start of attention awakened by this welcome
hint; and at this instant see the Rambler snuffing his candle, rubbing
his spectacles, stirring his fire, locking out interruption, and
settling himself in his easy chair, that he may enjoy a new calamity
without disturbance. For, whether it be that continued sickness or
misfortune has acquainted you only with the bitterness of being; or that
you imagine none but yourself able to discover what I suppose has been
seen and felt by all the inhabitants of the world; whether you intend
your writings as antidotal to the levity and merriment with which your
rivals endeavour to attract the favour of the publick; or fancy that you
have some particular powers of dolorous declamation, and _warble out
your groans_ with uncommon elegance or energy; it is certain, that
whatever be your subject, melancholy for the most part bursts in upon
your speculation, your gaiety is quickly overcast, and though your
readers may be flattered with hopes of pleasantry, they are seldom
dismissed but with heavy hearts.

That I may therefore gratify you with an imitation of your own syllables
of sadness, I will inform you that I was condemned by some disastrous
influence to be an only son, born to the apparent prospect of a large
fortune, and allotted to my parents at that time of life when satiety of
common diversions allows the mind to indulge parental affection with
greater intenseness. My birth was celebrated by the tenants with feasts,
and dances, and bag-pipes: congratulations were sent from every family
within ten miles round; and my parents discovered in my first cries such
tokens of future virtue and understanding, that they declared themselves
determined to devote the remaining part of life to my happiness and the
increase of their estate.

The abilities of my father and mother were not perceptibly unequal, and
education had given neither much advantage over the other. They had both
kept good company, rattled in chariots, glittered in playhouses, and
danced at court, and were both expert in the games that we