DCCXCVII. There is nothing that has more startled our English audience, than the Italian recitativo at its first entrance upon the stage. People were wonderfully surprised to hear generals singing the word of command, and ladies delivering messages in music. Our countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a lover chanting out a billet-doux, and even the superscription of a letter set to a tune. The famous blunder in an old play of "Enter a king and two fiddlers solus," was now no longer an absurdity; when it was impossible for a hero in a desert, or a princess in her closet, to speak any thing unaccompanied with musical instruments.-Addison. DCCXCVIII. Between the acting of a dreadful thing DCCXCIX. Shakspeare. Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites. Johnson. DCCC. The wisdom of this world is idiotism; Strength a weak reed; health sickness' enemy, DCCCI. Dekker. The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed, that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves: but the self-love of some men, inclines them to please others; and the self-love of others, is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.—Swift. DCCCII. Friendship's an abstract of love's noble flame, And is a heaven in epitome. DCCCIII. Catherine Phillips. Cowards die many times before their deaths; Will come when it will come. DCCCIV. Shakspeare. Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house sometime before it fall: it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him: it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are, 'sui amante, sine rivali," are many times unfortunate; and whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned.Lord Bacon. DCCCV. If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.-Franklin. DCCCVI. Whoever has flattered his friend successfully, must at once think himself a knave, and his friend a fool.Pope. DCCCVII. Diogenes, being asked who were the noblest men in the world, replied, those who despise riches, glory, pleasures, and lastly life; who overcome the contrary of all those things, viz, poverty, infamy, pain, and death, bearing them with an undaunted mind. And Socrates, being asked, what true nobility was, answered, temperance of mind and body.-From the Italian. DCCCVIII. Volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized above their intrinsic value, and kept with care; the latter seldom pass for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics, and clipping compilers.-Goldsmith. DCCCIX. A scholar, newly enter'd marriage life, I would be such a book you love to read. Husband," quoth she, "which book's form should I take? "Marry," said he, "'t were best an almanack: The reason wherefore I do wish thee so, Is, every year we have a new, you know." Rowland. DCCCX. To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy, the true empire, of beauty.-Steele. DCCCXI. It is generally known, that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence, or peevish exclamation.Johnson. DCCCXII. All live by seeming. The beggar begs with it, the gay courtier Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming: With showing what he is, shall have small credit DCCCXIII. A man that only translates, shall never be a poet; nor a painter that only copies; nor a swimmer that swims always with bladders; so people that trust wholly to others' charity, and without industry of their own, will always be poor.-Sir W. Temple. DCCCIV. As our stage heroes are generally lovers, their swelling and blustering upon the stage very much recommends them to the fair part of their audience. The ladies are wonderfully pleased to see a man insulting kings, or affronting the gods, in one scene, and throwing himself at the feet of his mistress in another. Let him behave himself insolently towards the men, and abjectly towards the fair one, and it is ten to one but he proves a favourite with the boxes. Dryden and Lee, in several of their tragedies, have practised this secret with good success. -Addison. DCCCXV. I pray thee, love, love me no more, That can, but will not save me. Amidst an ocean of delight, For pleasure to be starved. Drayton—to his Coy Love. DCCCXVI. When I consider what kind of men are made knights in England, it appears strange, that they have never conferred this honour upon women. They make cheese mongers and pastry-cooks knights; then why not their wives? they have called up tallow-chandlers to maintain the hardy profession of chivalry and arms; then why not their wives? Certain I am, their wives understand fighting and feats of mellay and battle better than they; and as for nightly horse and harnish, it is probable, both know nothing more than the harness of a one-horse chaise.-Goldsmith. DCCCXVII. Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation; they do not take in any thing for their own use, but merely to pass it to another.-Steele. DCCCXVIII. Learning is an addition beyond Without the ornament of knowledge, is A glorious ignorance. DCCCXIX. J. Shirley. Authors in France seldom speak ill of each other, but when they have a personal pique; authors in England seldom speak well of each other, but when they have a personal friendship.-Pope. |