What a delicious breath marriage sends forth,
The violet bed's not sweeter! Honest wedlock
Is like a banqueting house built in a garden,
On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours; when base lust,
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.

DCCCCXVII.

T. Middleton.

We may defend villany, or cry up folly before the world, but to appear fools, madmen, or varlets to ourselves, and prove it to our own faces, that we are really such, is insupportable. For so true a reverence has every one for himself, when he comes clearly to appear before his close companion, that he had rather profess the vilest things of himself in open company, than hear his character privately from his own mouth.-Shaftesbury.

DCCCCXVIII.

Man courts happiness in a thousand shapes, and the faster he follows it, the swifter it flies from him. Almost every thing promiseth happiness to us at a distance; such a step of honour, such a pitch of estate, such a fortune or match for a child: but when we come nearer to it, either we fall short of it, or it falls short of our expectation; and it is hard to say, which of these is the greatest disappointment. Our hopes are usually bigger than enjoyment can satisfy; and an evil long feared, besides that it may never come, is many times more painful and troublesome than the evil itself when it comes.-Tillotson.

DCCCCXIX.

Happy those princes, who are educated by men who are at once virtuous and wise, and have been for some time in the school of affliction; who weigh happiness against glory, and teach their royal pupils the real value of fame; who are ever showing the superior dignity of a man to that of royalty; that a peasant who does

his duty is a nobler character than a king of even middling reputation.—Goldsmith.

DCCCCXX.
Who fights

With passions, and o'ercomes them, is endued
With the best virtue, passive fortitude.

DCCCCXXI.

Massinger.

Industry needs not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting.-Franklin.

DCCCCXXII.

Where a great man is delicate in the choice of favourites, every one courts with greater earnestness his countenance and protection.-Hume.

DCCCCXXIII.

Millamant. One's cruelty is one's power, and when one parts with one's cruelty, one parts with one's power; and when one has parted with that, I fancy one's old and ugly.

Mirabel. Ay, ay, suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your lover-And then how vain, how lost a thing you'll be! Nay, 'tis true: you are no longer handsome when you have lost your lover; your beauty dies upon the instant: for beauty is the lover's gift; 'tis he bestows your charms-Your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flatter'd by it, and discover beauties in it; for that reflects our praises, rather than your face.

Mill. One no more owes one's beauty to a lover, than one's wit to an echo: they can but reflect what we look and say; vain, empty things if we are silent or unseen, and want a being.

Mirabel. Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two of the greatest pleasures of your life. Mill. How so?

Mirabel. To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised; and to an echo the plea

VOL. II.

sure of hearing yourselves talk.-Way of the WorldCongreve.

DCCCCXXIV.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villany, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. Contempt is the proper punishment of affectation, and detestation the just consequence of hypocrisy.-Johnson.

DCCCCXXV.

I could coney-catch the world, Make myself famous for a sudden wit, And be admired for my dexterity, Were I dispos'd.

I prithee how?

Why, thus: there liv'd a poet in this town,
(If we may term our modern writers poets,)
Sharp-witted, bitter-tongued, his pen of steel,
His wit was tempered with the biting juice,
And extracts of the bitterest weeds that grew:
He never wrote but when the elements
Of fire and water tilted in his brain.
This fellow, ready to give up his ghost
To Lucia's bosom, did bequeath to me
His library, which was just nothing

But rolls and scrolls, and bundles of cast wit,
Such as durst never visit St. Paul's church-yard:
Amongst them all I happen'd on a quire
Or two of paper, fill'd with songs and ditties,
And here and there a hungry epigram:
These I reserve to my own proper use,
And, paternoster-like, have conn'd them all.
I could now, when I am in company
At ale-house, tavern, or an ordinary,
Upon a theme make an extemporal ditty,
(Or one at least should seem extemporal,)
Out of th' abundance of this legacy,
That all would judge it, and report it too,
To be the infant of a sudden wit;
And then were I an admirable fellow.

T. Haywood.

DCCCCXXVI.

Lo! Silence himself is here;
Methinks I see the midnight god appear.
In all his downy pomp array'd,
Behold the rev'rend shade:

An ancient sigh he sits upon,

Whose memory of sound is long since gone,
And purposely annihilated for his throne:
Beneath, two soft transparent clouds do meet;
In which he seems to sink his softer feet.
A melancholy thought, condens'd to air,
Stol'n from a lover in despair,

Like a thin mantle, serves to wrap
In fluid folds his visionary shape.

A wreath of darkness round his head he wears,
Where curling mists supply the want of hairs.
While the still vapours, which from poppies rise,
Bedew his hoary face, and lull his eyes.

DCCCCXXVII.

Congreve.

Women are at little trouble to tell what they do not feel; men are at less to express what they really do feel.-Bruyere.

DCCCCXXVIII.

I have heard of heedless inconsiderate writers, that without any malice have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distinguishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire: as if it were not infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man, than a wit.-Addison.

DCCCCXXIX.

A long descent of noble ancestors was not necessary to have made you great; but heaven threw it in as an overplus when you were born. What you have done and suffered for two royal masters has been enough to make you illustrious; so that you may safely waive the nobility of your birth, and rely on your actions for your fame. You have cancelled the debt which you owed to

your progenitors, and reflect more brightness on their memory than you received from them.

Dryden-To the Duke of Ormond.

DCCCCXXX.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.-Swift.

DCCCCXXXI.

Scandal. I was an infidel to your sex, and you have converted me; for now I am convinced that all women are not, like fortune, blind in bestowing favours, either on those who do not merit, or who do not want them.

Angelica. It is an unreasonable accusation that you lay upon our sex. You tax us with injustice, only to cover your own want of merit. You would all have the reward of love: but few have the constancy to stay till it becomes your due. How few would persevere even to martyrdom, and sacrifice their interest to their constancy? In admiring me, you misplace the novelty.

The miracle to-day is, that we find

A lover true; not that a woman's kind.

Congreve-Love for Love.

DCCCCXXXII.

Talkers and futile persons, are commonly vain and credulous withal; for he that talketh what he knoweth, will also talk what he knoweth not; therefore set it down, that a habit of secrecy is both politic and moral: and in this part it is good, that a man's face gives his tongue leave to speak; for the discovery of a man's self, by the tracts of his countenance, is a great weakness and betraying, by how much it is many times more marked and believed than a man's words.-Lord Bacon.

DCCCCXXXIII.

Romeo. I dreamt a dream to night.
Mercutio. And so did I.

Rom. Well, what was yours?

Mer. That dreamers often lie.