BOWLES.
TO THE RAMBLER.
MR. RAMBLER,
SUCH is the tenderness or infirmity of many
minds, that when any affliction oppresses them,
they have immediate recourse to lamentation and
complaint, which, though it can only be allowed
reasonable when evils admit of remedy, and then only
when addressed to those from whom the remedy is
expected, yet seems even in hopeless and incurable
distresses to be natural, since those by whom it is
not indulged, imagine that they give a proof of
extraordinary fortitude by suppressing it.
I am one of those who, with the Sancho of Cervantes,
leave to higher characters the merit of suffering
in silence, and give vent without scruple to
any sorrow that swells in my heart. It is therefore
to me a severe aggravation of a calamity, when it is
such as in the common opinion will not justify the
acerbity of exclamation, or support the solemnity of
vocal grief. Yet many pains are incident to a man of
delicacy, which the unfeeling world cannot be
persuaded to pity, and which, when they are separated
from their peculiar and personal circumstances, will
never be considered as important enough to claim
attention, or deserve redress.
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