He by no means wants sense, which only serves to aggravate his former folly.

Poor forlorn creature, where are now the revellers, the flatterers, that he could once inspire and command! Gone, perhaps, to attend the bagnio pander, grown rich by his extravagance.

They once praised him, and now they applaud the pander: their former raptures at his wit, are now converted into sarcasms at his folly: he is poor, and perhaps deserves poverty; for he has neither the ambition to be independent, nor the skill to be useful.' Prompted, perhaps, by some secret reasons, I delivered this observation with too much acrimony, which my Sophia gently reproved.

'Whatsoever his former conduct may be, pappa, his circumstances should exempt him from censure now.

His present indigence is a sufficient punishment for former folly; and I have heard my pappa himself say, that we should never strike our unnecessary blow at a victim over whom providence holds the scourge of its resentment.'-- 'You are right, Sophy,' cried my son Moses, 'and one of the ancients finely represents so malicious a conduct, by the attempts of a rustic to flay Marsyas, whose skin, the fable tells us, had been wholly stript off by another.' Besides, I don't know if this poor man's situation be so bad as my father would represent it.