The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.

No. 99.  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1753.

 —­Magnis tamen excidit ausis.  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.

When Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, deserted to Aufidius, the Volscian servants at first insulted him, even while he stood under the protection of the household gods:  but when they saw that the project took effect, and the stranger was seated at the head of the table, one of them very judiciously observes, “that he always thought there was more in him than he could think.”

Machiavel has justly animadverted on the different notice taken by all succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Cataline and Caesar.  Both formed the same project, and intended to raise themselves to power, by subverting the commonwealth:  they pursued their design, perhaps, with equal abilities, and with equal virtue; but Cataline perished in the field, and Caesar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority:  and from that time, every monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured by a comparison with Caesar; and Cataline has been never mentioned, but that his name might be applied to traitors and incendiaries.