osophers, will find such an account of the condition expressed by
that term as his experience or observation will not easily discover to
be true. Instead of the meanness, distress, complaint, anxiety, and
dependance, which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of poverty,
he will read of content, innocence, and cheerfulness, of health and
safety, tranquillity and freedom; of pleasures not known but to men
unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that sheds his balsamick
anodynes only on the cottage. Such are the blessings to be obtained by
the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from their thrones,
and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber undisturbed in the
elysium of poverty.

If these authors do not deceive us, nothing can be more absurd than that
perpetual contest for wealth which keeps the world in commotion; nor any
complaints more justly censured than those which proceed from want of
the gifts of fortune, which we are taught by the great masters of moral
wisdom to consider as golden shackles, by which the wearer is at once
disabled and adorned; as luscious poisons which may for a time please
the palate, but soon betray their malignity by languor and by pain. It
is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful
without physick, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty
of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the
help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.

But it will be found upon a nearer view, that they who extol the
happiness of poverty, do not mean the same state with those who deplore
its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of
magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of
empires, or to contrive forms of lamentations, for monarchs in distress,
rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty, who make no
approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor, in the epick language,
is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have fleets and
armies in pay.

Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that
wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate, easily gratifies his
ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by
boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys.
He who would shew the extent of his views, and grandeur of his
conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and
magnif