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 clamours. 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.
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