re he is now looking about for a convenient
leap, which he tells me he is resolved to take, unless I support him
under the loss of that charming perjured woman. Poor Lavinia presses as
much for consolation on the other side, and is reduced to such an
extremity of despair by the inconstancy of Philander, that she tells me
she writes her letter with her pen in one hand and her garter in the
other. A gentleman of an ancient family in Norfolk is almost out of his
wits upon account of a greyhound, that after having been his inseparable
companion for ten years, is at last run mad. Another (who I believe is
serious) complains to me, in a very moving manner, of the loss of a
wife; and another, in terms still more moving, of a purse of money that
was taken from him on Bagshot Heath, and which, he tells me, would not
have troubled him if he had given it to the poor. In short, there is
scarce a calamity in human life that has not produced me a letter.

It is indeed wonderful to consider, how men are able to raise affliction
to themselves out of everything. Lands and houses, sheep and oxen, can
convey happiness and misery into the hearts of reasonable creatures.
Nay, I have known a muff, a scarf, or a tippet, become a solid blessing
or misfortune. A lap-dog has broke the hearts of thousands. Flavia, who
had buried five children, and two husbands, was never able to get over
the loss of her parrot. How often has a divine creature been thrown into
a fit by a neglect at a ball or an assembly? Mopsa has kept her chamber
ever since the last masquerade, and is in greater danger of her life
upon being left out of it, than Clarinda from the violent cold which she
caught at it. Nor are these dear creatures the only sufferers by such
imaginary calamities: many an author has been dejected at the censure of
one whom he ever looked upon as an idiot; and many a hero cast into a
fit of melancholy, because the rabble have not hooted at him as he
passed through the streets. Theron places all his happiness in a running
horse, Suffenus in a gilded chariot, Fulvius in a blue string, and
Florio in a tulip root. It would be endless to enumerate the many
fantastical afflictions that disturb mankind; but as a misery is not to
be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the
sufferer, I shall present my readers, who are unhappy either in reality
or imagination, with an allegory, for which I am indebted to the great
father and prince of poe