knew his temper, to lure him away on the day of
election.

His benevolence draws him into the commission of a thousand crimes,
which others less kind or civil would escape. His courtesy invites
application; his promises produce dependence; he has his pockets filled
with petitions, which he intends some time to deliver and enforce, and
his table covered with letters of request, with which he purposes to
comply; but time slips imperceptibly away, while he is either idle or
busy; his friends lose their opportunities, and charge upon him their
miscarriages and calamities.

This character, however contemptible, is not peculiar to Aliger. They
whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of
expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make
all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship,
obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest
of those that persist in their resolutions, execute what they design,
and perform what they have promised.

No. 202. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1752.

[Greek: Pros apanta deilos estin o penaes pragmata,
Kai pantas autou kataphronein upolambanei
O de metrios pratton periskegesteron
Apanta t aniara, dampria, phepei.] CALLIMACHUS.

From no affliction is the poor exempt,
He thinks each eye surveys him with contempt;
Unmanly poverty subdues the heart,
Cankers each wound, and sharpen's[1] ev'ry dart. F. LEWIS.
[1] Transcriber's note: sic.

Among those who have endeavoured to promote learning, and rectify
judgment, it has been long customary to complain of the abuse of words,
which are often admitted to signify things so different, that, instead
of assisting the understanding as vehicles of knowledge, they produce
errour, dissention, and perplexity, because what is affirmed in one
sense, is received in another.

If this ambiguity sometimes embarrasses the most solemn controversies,
and obscures the demonstrations of science, it may well be expected to
infest the pompous periods of declaimers, whose purpose is often only to
amuse with fallacies, and change the colours of truth and falsehood; or
the musical compositions of poets, whose style is professedly
figurative, and whose art is imagined to consist in distorting words
from their original meaning.

There are few words of which the reader believes himself better to know
the import, than of _poverty_; yet, whoever studies either the poets or
phil