been laid upon you, I expect that you should produce more at
eighteen, than uncultivated soils do at eight-and-twenty.

Pray tell Mr. Harte that I have received his letter of the 13th, N. S.
Mr. Smith was much in the right not to let you go, at this time of the
year, by sea; in the summer you may navigate as much as you please; as,
for example, from Leghorn to Genoa, etc. Adieu.

LETTER XCII

LONDON, November 27, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: While the Roman Republic flourished, while glory was pursued,
and virtue practiced, and while even little irregularities and
indecencies, not cognizable by law, were, however, not thought below the
public care, censors were established, discretionally to supply, in
particular cases, the inevitable defects of the law, which must and can
only be general. This employment I assume to myself with regard to your
little republic, leaving the legislative power entirely to Mr. Harte; I
hope, and believe, that he will seldom, or rather never, have occasion to
exert his supreme authority; and I do by no means suspect you of any
faults that may require that interposition. But, to tell you the plain
truth, I am of opinion that my censorial power will not be useless to
you, nor a sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the better for us
both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most,
written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and
some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon
ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety,
indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did.
I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality
of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that
I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them. I have
often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in
general know less, than how to love and how to hate. They hurt those they
love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality
to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed
passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken
manner. From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious
attention, and not my plaything. I consulted your real good, not your
humors or fancies; and I shall continue to do so while you want it, which
will probably b