about the reality of
external evils is now at an end. That life has many miseries, and that
those miseries are sometimes at least equal to all the powers of
fortitude is now universally confessed; and, therefore, it is useful to
consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which
either the accidents of affairs or the infirmities of nature must bring
upon us may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours
less wretched which the condition of our present existence will not
allow to be very happy.

"The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but
palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and interwoven
with our being; all attempts, therefore, to decline it wholly are
useless and vain; the armies of pain send their arrows against us on
every side, the choice is only between those which are more or less
sharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less malignity; and the
strongest armour which reason can supply will only blunt their points,
but cannot repel them.

"The great remedy which Heaven has put in our hands is patience, by
which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a
great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the
natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony
or prolonging its effects."

It is hardly desirable for a moralist to aim at originality in his
precepts. We must be content if he enforces old truths in such a manner
as to convince us of the depth and sincerity of his feeling. Johnson, it
must be confessed, rather abuses the moralist's privilege of being
commonplace. He descants not unfrequently upon propositions so trite
that even the most earnest enforcement can give them little interest.
With all drawbacks, however, the moralizing is the best part of the
_Rambler_. Many of the papers follow the precedent set by Addison in the
_Spectator_, but without Addison's felicity. Like Addison, he indulges
in allegory, which, in his hands, becomes unendurably frigid and clumsy;
he tries light social satire, and is fain to confess that we can spy a
beard under the muffler of his feminine characters; he treats us to
criticism which, like Addison's, goes upon exploded principles, but
unlike Addison's, is apt to be almost wilfully outrageous. His odd
remarks upon Milton's versification are the worst example of this
weakness. The result is what one might expect from the attempt