Which to the lowest depths of guile descends,
By vilest means pursues the vilest ends;
Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite,
Fawns in the day, and butchers in the night;
With that malignant envy which turns pale,
And sickens even, if a friend prevail;
Which merit and success pursues with hate,
And damns the worth it cannot imitate;
With the cold caution of a coward's spleen,
Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen,
Which keeps this maxim ever in her view-
What's basely done, should be done safely too;
With that dull, rooted, callous impudence
Which, dead to shame, and every nicer sense,
Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading vice's snares,
She blunder'd on some virtue unawares,
With all these blessings, which we seldom find
Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind,
A motley figure, of the fribble tribe,

Which heart can scarce conceive or pen describe,
Came simpering on.

Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both
Of neuter gender, tho' of Irish growth,
A six-foot suckling, mincing in its gait,
Affected, peevish, prim and delicate;
Fearful It seem'd, tho' of athletic make,
Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake
Its tender form, and savage motion spread
O'er Its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red.
Much did It talk, in Its own pretty phrase,
Of genius and of taste, of players, and of plays;
Much too of writings which Itself had wrote,
Of special merit, tho' of little note:

For fate, in a strange humour, had decreed
That what it wrote none but Itself should read;
Much too It chatter'd of dramatic laws,
Misjudging critics, and misplac'd applause;

Then with a self-complacent pitting air
It smil'd, It smirk'd, It wriggled to the chair,
And with an awkward briskness-not Its own,
Looking around, and perching on the throne,
Triumphant seem'd; when that strange savage dame,
Known but to few, or only known by name,
Plain common sense appear'd, by nature there
Appointed, with plain truth, to guard the chair;
The pageant saw, and blasted with her frown,
To Its first state of nothing melted down.
Nor shall the muse (for even there the pride
Of this vain nothing shall be mortified;)

Nor shall the muse (should fate ordain her rhymes,
Fond, pleasing, thought! to live in after-times)
With such a trifler's name her pages blot;
Known be the character, the thing forgot.
Let It, to disappoint each future aim,
Live without sex, and die without a name.

DCCCLXXXIX.

Churchill.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough, if she unmask her beauties to the moon.-Shakspeare.

DCCCXC.

The elegant arts owe their choicest beauties to a taste for the contemplation of nature. Painting and sculpture are express imitations of visible objects, and where would be the charms of poetry, if divested of the imagery and embellishments, which she borrows from rural scenes? Painters, statuaries, and poets, therefore, are always ambitious to acknowledge themselves the pupils of nature; and as their skill increases, they grow more and more delighted with every view of the animal and vegetable world. But the pleasure resulting from admiration is transient; and to cultivate taste, without regard to its influence on the passions and affections, is to rear a tree for its blossoms, which is capable of yielding the richest, and most valuable fruit.Percival.

DCCCXCI.

The meanest wretch, if heav'n should give him line,
Would never stop till he were thought divine.
All might discern the serpent's pride;

If from ourselves nothing ourselves did hide.

DCCCXCII.

Waller.

What is more reasonable, than that they who take pains for any thing, should get most in that particular for which they take pains? They have taken pains for power, you for right principles; they for riches, you for a proper use of the appearances of things; see whether they have the advantage of you in that for which they have taken pains, and which they neglect. If they are in power, and you not, why will not you speak the truth to yourself, that you do nothing for the sake of power, but that they do every thing? No, but since I take care to have right principles, it is more reasonable that I should have power. Yes, in respect to what you take care about,-your principles. But give up to others the things in which they have taken more care than you. Else it is just as if, because you have right principles, you should think it fit when you shoot an arrow, you should hit the mark better than the archer, or that you should forge better than a smith.— Epictetus.

DCCCXCIII.

Is it an impossibility for a man to find out the art of making his wife love him?-Bruyere.

DCCCXCIV.

I am a very constant frequenter of the playhouse, a place to which I suppose the Idler not much a stranger, since he can have no where else so much entertainment with so little concurrence of his own endeavour. At all other assemblies, he that comes to receive delight, will be expected to give it; but in the theatre nothing is necessary to the amusement of two hours, but to sit down and be willing to be pleased.-Johnson.

DCCCXCV.

(A Favourite.) His revenue lies

In a narrow compass, the king's ear; and yields him
Every hour a fruitful harvest. Men may talk
Of three crops a year in the Fortunate Islands,
Or profit made by wool; but while there are suitors,
His sheep-shearings, nay, shaving to the quick,
Is in every quarter of the moon, and constant.
In the time of trussing a point, he can undo
Or make a man: his play or recreation

Is to raise this up, or pull down that; and, though
He never yet took orders, makes more bishops
Than the pope himself.

DCCCXCVI.

Massinger.

You are not yet a great man, because you are railed at by the little, and esteemed by some great characters; then only you deserve that name when the cavils of the insignificant, and the esteem of the great, keep you at equal distance from pride and despondence, invigorate your courage, and add to your humility.-Lavater.

DCCCXCVII.

Common swearing, if it have any serious meaning at all, argues in man a perpetual distrust of his own reputation, and is an acknowledgment that he thinks his bare word not to be worthy of credit. And it is so far from adorning and filling a man's discourse, that it makes it look swollen and bloated, and more bold and blustering than becomes persons of genteel and good breeding.— Tillotson.

DCCCXCVIII.

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears: Yet slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:

List to the heavy part the music bears,

Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs and flowers,

Fall grief in showers,

Our beauties are not ours;

O, I could still,

Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,

Since nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil.

Echo-in Cynthia's Revels-Ben Jonson.

DCCCXCIX.

I do not think a philosopher obliged to account for every phenomenon in nature, or drown himself with Aristotle, for not being able to solve the ebbing and flowing of the tide, in that fatal sentence he passed upon himself, quia te non capio, tu capies me, wherein he was at once the judge and the criminal, the accuser and executioner.-Swift.

DCCCC.

It is wonderful that the frequent exercise of reading the Common Prayer should not make the performers of that duty more expert in it. This inability, as I conceive, proceeds from the little care that is taken of their reading while boys, and at school, where, when they are got into Latin, they are looked upon as above English, the reading of which is wholly neglected, or at least read to very little purpose, without any due observations made to them of the proper accent and manner of reading.-Steele.

DCCCCI.

Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a-day by his labour, and goes abroad or sits idle one-half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.-Franklin.

DCCCCII.

Timorous virgins form a dreadful chimera of a husband, as of a creature contrary to that soft, humble, pliant, easy thing, a lover; so guess at plagues in matrimony, in opposition to the pleasures of courtship. Alas! courtship to marriage, is but as the music in the play-house, till the curtain is drawn; but, that once up, then opens the scene of pleasure.--Congreve,