He then elevates his views to nobler
enjoyments, and finds all the scattered excellencies
of the female world united in a woman, who prefers
his addresses to wealth and titles; he is afterwards
to engage in business, to dissipate difficulty, and
overpower opposition: to climb, by the mere force
of merit, to fame and greatness; and reward all those
who countenanced his rise, or paid due regard to
his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace
and honour; contract his views to domestick pleasures;
form the manners of children like himself;
observe how every year expands the beauty of his
daughters, and how his sons catch ardour from their
father's history; he will give laws to the neighbourhood;
dictate axioms to posterity; and leave the
world an example of wisdom and happiness.
With hopes like these, he sallies jocund into life;
to little purpose is he told, that the condition of
humanity admits no pure and unmingled happiness;
that the exuberant gaiety of youth ends in poverty
or disease; that uncommon qualifications and
contrarieties of excellence, produce envy equally with
applause; that whatever admiration and fondness
may promise him, he must marry a wife like the
wives of others, with some virtues and some faults,
and be as often disgusted by her vices, as delighted
by her elegance; that if he adventures into the circle
of action, he must expect to encounter men as
artful, as daring, as resolute as himself; that of his
children, some may be deformed, and others vicious;
some may disgrace him by their follies, some offend
him by their insolence, and some exhaust him by
their profusion.
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