The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great

AND EDUCATION OF MR. J

ntention; and, as the dramatic poet generally prepares the entry of every considerable character with a solemn narrative, or at least a great flourish

i occurr

ed all the learned astrologers of her time, seeming to imply in it a contradiction; Mercury being the god of ingenuity, and Priapus the terror of those who practised it. What made this dream the more wonderful, and perhaps the true cause of its being remembered, was a very extraordinary circumstance, sufficiently denoting something preternatural in it; for though she had never heard even the name of eit

enjoyed it clandestinely; and as nature, by true and accurate observers, is remarked to give us no appetites without furnishing us with the means of gratifying

rance on this great theatre the very day when the plague first broke out in 1665. Some say his mother was delivered of him in an house of an

the first that came with any readiness from young master Wild. Nor must we omit the early indications which he gave of the sweetness of his temper; for though he was by no means to be terrified

onsulted, and, though he was himself seldom concerned in the execution of the design, yet was he always concerter of it, and treasurer of the booty, some little part of which he would now and then, with wonderful generosity, bestow on those who took it. He was general

enerally acknowledged to be a very unprofitable study, and indeed greatly to hinder the advancement of men in the world: but though master Wild was not esteemed the readiest at making his exercise, he was universally allowed to be the most dexterous at stealing it of all his schoolfellows, being never detected in such furtive compositions, nor indeed in any other exerci

that passage in the eleventh Iliad where Achilles is said to have bound two sons of Priam upon a mountain, and afterwards to have released them for a sum of money. This was, he said, alone sufficient to refute those who affected a contempt for the wisdom of the ancients, and an undeniable testimony of the great antiquity of priggism.[Footnote:

man, to whom he thought Hercules much too severe: one of his schoolfellows commending the dexterity of drawing the ox

tly draw parallels. He was much delighted with the accounts of the Czar's retreat from the latter, who carried off the inhabitants of

would sometimes, from an humility in his nature too pernicious to true greatness, condescend to an intimacy with inf

s excessive regard to his morals, brought his son to town, where he resided with him till he was of an age to travel. Whilst he was here, all