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(Like rats that ravine down their proper bane) A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.

MCCLI.

Shakspeare.

Query. Whether churches are not dormitories of the living, as well as of the dead?-Swift.

MCCLII.

As we in England are a sober people, and generally inclined rather to a certain bashfulness of behaviour in public, it is amazing whence some fellows come whom one meets with in this town; they do not at all seem to be the growth of our island; the pert, the talkative, all such as have no sense of the observation of others, are certainly of foreign extraction. As for my part, I am as much surprised when I see a talkative Englishman, as I should be to see the Indian pine growing on one of our quickset hedges. Where these creatures get sun enough to make them such lively animals, and dull men, is above my philosophy.-Steele.

MCCLIII.

Honours which from verse their source derive,
Shall both surmount detraction, and survive;
And poets have unquestion'd right to claim,
If not the greatest, the most lasting, name.

MCCLIV.

.

Congreve.

If it were only the exercise of the body, the moving of the lips, the bending of the knee, man would as commonly step to heaven as they go to visit a friend: but to separate our thoughts and affections from the world, to draw forth all our graces, and increase each in its proper object, and to hold them to it till the work prospers in our hands, this, this is the difficulty.-Baxter.

MCCLV.

Kiss me, sweet: the wary lover
Can your favours keep, and cover,
When the common courting jay
All your beauties will betray.

Kiss again; no creature comes;
Kiss, and score up wealthy sums;
On my lips, thus hardly sundred,
While you breathe. First give a hundred,
Then a thousand, then another,
Hundred, then unto the other
Add a thousand, and so more:
Till you equal with the store,
All the grass that Rumney yields,
Or the sands in Chelsea fields,
Or the drops in silver Thames,
Or the stars that gild his streams,
In the silent summer nights,

When youths ply their stolen delights;
That the curious may not know
How to tell 'em as they flow,
And the envious, when they find
What their number is, be pined.

To Celia-Ben Jonson.

MCCLVI.

They who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their preface how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deserved no better.-Dryden.

MCCLVII.

I never could learn by what right, nor conceive with what feelings a naturalist can occasion the misery of an innocent bird, and leave its young, perhaps to perish in a cold nest, because it has gay plumage, and has never been accurately delineated; or deprive even a butterfly of its natural enjoyments; because it has the misfortune to be rare and beautiful.-Sir W. Jones.

MCCLVIII.

I hate ingratitude more in a man,

Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption
Inhabits our frail blood.

MCCLIX.

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Shakspeare.

I would particularly recommend our rising actresses, never to take notice of the audience upon any occasion whatsoever; let the spectators applaud never so loudly, their praises should pass, except at the end of the epilogue, with seeming inattention.-Goldsmith.

MCCLX.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academies,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

MCCLXI.

Shakspeare.

He that expects to get, must relish all commodities alike, and admit no difference between oade (woad) and frankincense, or the most precious balsamum and a tar-barrel.-Ben Jonson.

MCCLXII.

Of all the impertinent wishes which we hear expressed in conversation, there is not one more unworthy a gentleman or a man of liberal education, than that of wishing one's self younger. I have observed this wish is usually made upon sight of some object which gives the idea of a past action, that it is no dishonour to us that we cannot now repeat; or else on what was in itself shameful when we performed it.-Steele.

MCCLXIII.

To deal freely with you counsellors, it is a matter that they who are strangers to your profession, can scarce put any fair construction upon; that the worst cause for a little money should find an advocate among

you! This driveth the standers-by upon this harsh dilemma, to think that either your understandings, or your consciences, are very bad. If indeed you so little know a good cause from a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very unskilful in your profes sion. But when almost every cause, even the worst that comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against it; and in the palpablest cases you are some on one side, and some on the other, the strange difference of your judgments doth seem to betray their weakness: but if you know the causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you oppose, it more evidently betrays a deplorable conscience. I speak not of your innocent or excusable mistakes in cases of great difficulty, nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main, from unjust aggravations: but when money will hire you to plead for injustice against your own knowledge, and to use your wits to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him with delays, for the advantage of your unrighteous client: I would not have your conscience for all your gains, nor your accompt to make for all the world.-Baxter.

MCCLXIV.

He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.-Shakspeare.

MCCLXV.

Two friends that met would give each other wine,
And made their entrance at next bush and sign:
Calling for claret, which they did agree,

(The season hot) should qualified be

With water and sugar; so the same being brought
By a new boy, in vintner's tricks untaught;

They quickly bid him bring fair water in,

Who look'd as strange as he amaz'd had bin.

"Why dost not stir," quoth they, "with nimble feet?" "Cause, gentlemen," said he, "it is not meet To put in too much water in your drink, For there's enough, already, sure I think; Richard the drawer, by my troth I vow, Put in great store of water even now.

Rowland.

MCCLXVI.

Some men are brave in battle who are weak in counsel, which daily experience sets before our eyes; others deliberate wisely, but are weak in the performing part; and even no man is the same, to-day, which he was yesterday or may be to-morrow. On this account, says Polybius, "a good man is sometimes liable to blame; and a bad man, though not often, may possibly deserve to be commended."-Dryden.

MCCLXVII.

We must not make a scare-crow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror. Shakspeare.

MCCLXVIII.

Ceremonies are different in every country; but true politeness is every where the same. Ceremonies which take up so much of our attention, are only artificial helps which ignorance assumes in order to imitate politeness, which is the result of good sense and good nature. A person possessed of those qualities, though he had never seen a court, is truly agreeable; and if without them, would continue a clown, though he had been all his life a gentleman usher.-Goldsmith.

MCCLXIX.

Thought

Precedes the will to think, and error lives
Ere reason can be born. Reason, the power
To guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp
Of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns,
Fooling the follower betwixt shade and shining.
Congreve.

MCCLXX.

Of gentle blood, his parents' only treasure,
Their lasting sorrow, and their vanished pleasure,
Adorned with features, virtues, wit, and grace,

A large provision for so short a race:

More moderate gifts might have prolonged his date,
Too early fitted for a better state:

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