which can make itself immediately known; time and opportunity are necessary to it, and a person who can assist us with his favour, and be a Mecenas to us.-Pliny.

DCCCXLVII.

"Tis the property of all true knowledge, especially spiritual, to enlarge the soul by filling it; to enlarge it without swelling it; to make it more capable, and more earnest to know, the more it knows.-Sprat.

DCCCXLVIII.

Laughter is indeed the propriety of a man, but just enough to distinguish him from his elder brother with four legs. It is a kind of bastard pleasure too, taken in at the eyes of the vulgar gazers, and at the ears of the beastly audience. Church-painters use it to divert the honest countryman at public prayers, and keep his eyes open at a heavy sermon; and farce scribblers make use of the same noble invention, to entertain citizens, country gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops.-Dryden.

DCCCXLIX.

No gold can bring pleasure, if not that for the loss of which we are beforehand prepared: the grief of loving a thing, and the fear of loving it are equal.-Seneca.

DCCCL.

Stint thy babbling tongue!

Fond echo, thou profan'st the grace is done thee,
So idle worldlings merely made of voice,
Censure the power above them.

DCCCLI.

O, that estates, degrees, and offices,

Ben Jonson.

Were not derived corruptly! And that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

How many then should cover, that stand bare?
How many be commanded, that command?

How much low peasantry would then be glean'd

From the true seed of honour? And how much honour

Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times,

To be new varnish'd.

DCCCLII.

Shakspeare.

This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company, nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier made up, than when once it has taken air.-Xantippe.—Erasmus.

DCCCLIII.
O, vanity,

How are thy painted beauties doted on,
By light and empty idiots! how pursued
With open and extended appetite!

How they do sweat and run themselves from breath,
Raised on their toes, to catch thy airy forms,

Still turning giddy till they reel like drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour
With the long irksomeness of following time.

DCCCLIV.

Ben Jonson,

Truth is never to be expected from authors, whose understandings are warped with enthusiasm; for they judge all actions and their causes by their own perverse principles, and a crooked line can never be the measure of a straight one.-Dryden.

DCCCLV.

The being void of errors is the first great step to the greatest knowledge; and that understanding, in which, though little is written, yet nothing is blotted; that which is not disfigured by ill impressions, is a subject most capable of the best. There nothing is required but plain teaching; whereas, the mind that is either perverted by false knowledge, or made crooked by deceitful prejudices, must not only be taught, but first untaught that ill it had learned: and to unteach is a more difficult work than to teach.-Sprat.

DCCCLVI.

As the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drank beyond the measure, vents the most inward secrets.-Montaigne.

DCCCLVII.

"Tis not so hard to counterfeit joy in the depth of affliction, as to dissemble mirth in company of fools!— Why should I call them fools? The world thinks better of them; for these have quality and education, wit, and fine conversation, are received and admired by the world: if not, they like and admire themselves.-And why is not that true wisdom? for 'tis happiness; and, for aught I know, we have misapplied the name all this while, and mistaken the thing: since

If happiness in self-content is plac'd,

The wise are wretched, and fools only bless'd.

Love, that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health, is short-lived, and apt to have ague fits.—Eras

mus.

DCCCLIX.

He who studies the life, yet bungles, may draw some faint imitation of it, but he who purposely avoids nature, must fall into grotesque, and make no likeness.—Dryden. DCCCLX.

Music I passionately love, 'tis plain,
Since for its sake such dramas I sustain.
An opera, like a pillory, may be said

To nail our ears down, but expose our head.

DCCCLXI.

Young.

When a man's desires are boundless, his labour is endless; they will set him a task he can never go through, and cut him out work he can never finish. The satisfaction which he seeks, is always absent, and the happiness which he aims at, ever at a distance. He has perpetually many things to do, and many things to provide;

and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.Balguy.

DCCCLXII.

Covetousness, by a greediness of getting more, deprives itself of the true end of getting: it loses the enjoyment of what it had got.--Sprat.

DCCCLXIII.

Love is better than a pair of spectacles to make every thing seem greater, which is seen through it.-Sir P. Sidney.

DCCCLXIV.

If any here chance to behold himself,

Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong,
For, if he shame to have his follies known,
First he should shame to act 'em: my strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe,
Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls,
As lick up every idle vanity.

Prologue to Every Man out of his Humour.-B. Jonson.

DCCCLXV.

A wise man ought to take counsel, for fear of mixing his will with his wit.-Socrates.

DCCCLXVI.

If a man get a fever, or a pain in the head with over drinking, we are subject to curse the wine, when we should rather impute it to ourselves for the excess.Erasmus.

DCCCLXVII.

It is not growing like a tree,

In bulke, doth make man better be:
Or standing long an oake, three hundred yeare,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and seare:
A lillie of a day,

Is fairer farre in May,

Although it fall and die that night:-
It was the plant and flower of light,

In such proportions we just beauties see:
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Ode to the Memory of a Youth.-Ben Jonson.

DCCCLXVIII.

Mr. Hobbes was used to say,-that a man was always against reason, when reason was against a man:-so (some) authors are for obscuring truth, because truth would discover them. They are not historians of an action, but lawyers of a party; they are retained by their principles, and bribed by their interests; their narrations are an opening of their case; and in the front of their histories there ought to be written the prologue of a pleading,-"I am for the plaintiff," or, "I am for the defendant."-Dryden.

DCCCLXIX.

He that does not know those things which are of use and necessity for him to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever he may know besides.-Tillotson.

DCCCLXX.

The labouring bee, when his sharp sting is gone,
Forgets his golden work, and turns a drone;
Such is a satire, when you take away

That rage in which his noble vigour lay.

*

*

*

How can he show his manhood, if

*

you bind him To box, like boys, with one hand tied behind him?

DCCCLXXI.

Dryden.

A restless mind, like a rolling stone, gathers nothing but dirt and mire. Little or no good will cleave to it; and it is sure to leave peace and quietness behind it.Balguy.

DCCCLXXII.

Honour is the subject of my story.—
I cannot tell, what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.

Shakspeare