OVID. Met. Lib. ii. 328.
But in the glorious enterprise he died. ADDISON.
IT has always been the practice of mankind, to
judge of actions by the event. The same attempts,
conducted in the same manner, but terminated by
different success, produce different judgments: they
who attain their wishes, never want celebrators of
their wisdom and their virtue; and they that
miscarry, are quickly discovered to have been defective
not only in mental but in moral qualities. The world
will never be long without some good reason to hate
the unhappy; their real faults are immediately
detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them
into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be
superadded: he that fails in his endeavours after
wealth or power, will not long retain either honesty
or courage.
This species of injustice has so long prevailed in
universal practice, that it seems likewise to have
infected speculation: so few minds are able to separate
the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir
William Temple has determined, "that he who can
deserve the name of a hero, must not only be virtuous
but fortunate."
By this unreasonable distribution of praise and
blame, none have suffered oftener than projectors,
whose rapidity of imagination and vastness of design
raise such envy in their fellow mortals, that every
eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at
their distresses: yet even a projector may gain favour
by success; and the tongue that was prepared to
hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of
applause.
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