It will now be natural to inquire, by what arts are the writers of the
present and future ages to attract the notice; and favour of mankind.
They are to observe the alterations which time is always making in the
modes of life, that they may gratify every generation with a picture of
themselves. Thus love is uniform, but courtship is perpetually varying:
the different arts of gallantry, which beauty has inspired, would of
themselves be sufficient to fill a volume; sometimes balls and
serenades, sometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to
melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been sensible of
scarce any other merit than that of riches, and listened only to
jointures and pin-money. Thus the ambitious man has at all times been
eager of wealth and power; but these hopes have been gratified in some
countries by supplicating the people, and in others by flattering the
prince: honour in some states has been only the reward of military
achievements, in others it has been gained by noisy turbulence and
popular clamour. Avarice has worn a different form, as she actuated the
usurer of Rome, and the stock-jobber of England; and idleness itself,
how little soever inclined to the trouble of invention, has been forced
from time to time to change its amusements, and contrive different
methods of wearing out the day.

Here then is the fund, from which those who study mankind may fill their
compositions with an inexhaustible variety of images and allusions: and
he must be confessed to look with little attention upon scenes thus
perpetually changing, who cannot catch some of the figures before they
are made vulgar by reiterated descriptions.

It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and
primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from
various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of
tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which
put the world in motion, and produce all the bustle and eagerness of the
busy crowds that swarm upon the earth; the passions, from whence arise
all the pleasures and pains that we see and hear of, if we analyze the
mind of man, are very few; but those few agitated and combined, as
external causes shall happen to operate, and modified by prevailing
opinions and accidental caprices, make such frequent alterations on the
surface of life, that the show, while we are busied in delineating it,
v