Among the innumerable bidders for praise, some
are willing to purchase at the highest rate, and offer
ease and health, fortune and life. Yet even of these
only a small part have gained what they so earnestly
desired; the student wastes away in meditation, and
the soldier perishes on the ramparts, but unless some
accidental advantage co-operates with merit, neither
perseverance nor adventure attracts attention, and
learning and bravery sink into the grave, without
honour or remembrance.
But ambition and vanity generally expect to be
gratified on easier terms. It has been long observed,
that what is procured by skill or labour to the first
possessor, may be afterwards transferred for money;
and that the man of wealth may partake all the
acquisitions of courage without hazard, and all the
products of industry without fatigue. It was easily
discovered, that riches would obtain praise among
other conveniences, and that he whose pride was
unluckily associated with laziness, ignorance, or
cowardice, needed only to pay the hire of a panegyrist,
and he might be regaled with periodical eulogies;
might determine, at leisure, what virtue or science
he would be pleased to appropriate, and be lulled in
the evening with soothing serenades, or waked in the
morning by sprightly gratulations.
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