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MCXVI.

K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.
Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou can'st give:
Shorten my days thou can'st with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow:
Thou can'st help time to furrow me with age;
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage:

Thy word is current with him for my death;
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

King Richard II.—Shakspeare.

MCXVII.

Millamant. An illiterate man's my aversion. der at the impudence of an illiterate man to make love.

I won

offer to

Witwould. That, I confess, I wonder at, too Millamant. Ah! to marry an ignorant! that can hardly read or write.

Pet. Why should a man be any further from being married tho' he can't read, than he is from being hang'd. The ordinary's paid for setting the psalm, and the parish-priest for reading the ceremony. And for the rest which is to follow in both cases, a man may do it without book-so all's one for that.

Way of the World-Congreve.

MCXVIII.

As all wrongs, though thrust into one scale,
Slide of themselves off, when right fills the other,
And cannot bide the trial; so all wealth,

I mean if ill acquired, cemented to honour

By virtuous ways achieved, and bravely purchased, Is but as rubbish poured into a river

(Howe'er intended to make good the bank,) Rendering the water, that was pure before, Polluted and unwholesome.

MCXIX.

Massinger.

'Tis allowable to grumble at the delaying a payment, but to murmur at the deferring a benefit, is to be impudently ungrateful beforehand.-Dennis.

MCXX.

Princes that would their people should do well,
Must at themselves begin, as at the head;
For men, by their example, pattern out
Their imitations, and regard of laws;
A virtuous court a world to virtue draws.

MCXXL

Ben Jonson.

For any man to match above his rank,
Is but to sell his liberty.

MCXXII.

Massinger.

Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires, makes a wise and a happy purchase.-Balguy.

MCXXIII.

The grand monde worship a sort of idol, which daily creates men by a kind of manufactory operation. This idol [a tailor] is placed in the highest parts of the house on an altar erected about three feet; he is shown in the posture of a Persian emperor, sitting on a superficies, with his legs interwoven under him. This god had a goose for his ensign; whence it is that some learned men pretend to deduce his original from Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the altar, Hell seemed to open and catch at the animals the idol was creating; to prevent which, certain of his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed mass, or substance, and sometimes whole limbs already enlivened, which that horrid gulf insatiably swallowed, terrible to behold. The goose was also held a subaltern divinity, or deus minorum gentium, before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so great renown abroad for being the delight and favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus. Millions of these animals are hourly sacrificed every day to appease the hunger of that consuming deity. The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor of the yard and needle, whether as the god of seamen, or on account of

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certain other mystical attributes, which hath not suffi ciently been cleared.-Swift.

MCXXIV.

When we rise in knowledge, as the prospect widens, the objects of our regard become more obscure, and the unlettered peasant, whose views are only directed to the narrow sphere around him, beholds nature with a finer relish, and tastes her blessings with a keener appetite than the philosopher, whose mind attempts to grasp a universal system.-Goldsmith.

MCXXV.

(Self-interest.) Rounded in the ear

With that same purchase-changer, that sly devil;
That broker, that still breaks the pate of faith;
That daily break-vow; he that wins of all,

Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,
Who having no external thing to lose

But the word maid,-cheats the poor maid of that;
That smooth-faced gentleman, trickling commodity-
Commodity, the bias of the world;

The world, who of itself is poised well,
Made to run even, upon even ground;
Till this advantage, this vile drawing bias,
This sway of motion, this commodity,
Makes it take heed from all indifferency,
From all direction, purpose, course, intent:

MCXXVI.

Skakspeare.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.— Johnson.

MCXXVII.

Sick minds are like sick men that burn with fevers,
Who when they drink, please but a present taste,
And after bear a more impatient fit.
Ben Jonson.

MCXXVIII.

There is so great a fever in goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough to make fellowships accursed: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news.Shakspeare.

MCXXIX.

Criticism is now become a mere hangman's work, and meddles only with the faults of authors; nay, the critic is disgusted less with their absurdity than excellence: and you cannot displease him more than in leaving him little room for his malice in your correctness and perfection; though that indeed is what he never allows any man; for, like the bed of Procrustes, they stretch or cut off an author to its length. These spoilers of Parnassus are a just excuse for concealing their name, since more of their malice is levelled at the person than the thing; and as a sure mark of their judgment, they will extol to the skies the incongruous work of a person they will not allow to write common sense.-Dryden.

MCXXX.

It is in the general behalf of society that I speak, at least the more judicious part of it, which seems much distasted with the immodest and obscene writing of many in their plays. Besides, they could wish your poets would leave to be promoters of other men's jests, and to way-lay all the stale apophthegms, or the books they can hear of in print, or otherwise, to farce their scenes withal. That they would not so penuriously glean wit from every laundress or hackneyman, or derive their best grace, with servile imitation, from common stages, or observation of the company they converse with; as if their invention lived wholly on another man's trencher. Again, that feeding their friends with nothing of their own, but what they have twice or thrice

cooked, they should not wantonly give it out how soon they had dressed it; nor how many coach-horses came to carry away the broken meat, besides hobby-horses and foot-cloth wags.-Ben Jonson.

MCXXXI.

Great is the power of eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty, and returned to it again with tears.-Sterne.

MCXXXII.

Thy father tells me thou art too poetical, boy: thou must not be so; thou must leave poets, young novice, thou must; they are a sort of poor starved rascals, that are ever wrapped up in foul linen, and can boast of nothing but a lean visage peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblems of beggary.-The Poetaster-Ben Jonson.

MCXXXIII.

-Let me lead you from this place of sorrow,
To one where young Delights attend; and Joys,
Yet new, unborn, and blooming in the bud,
Which wait to be full-blown at your approach,
And spread like roses, to the morning sun;
Where ev'ry hour shall roll in circling joys,
And Love shall wing the tedious-wasting day.
Life without Love is load; and Time stands still;
What we refuse to him, to death we give;
And then, then only, when we love, we live.

· Mourning Bride-Congreve. MCXXXIV.

Though men may impose upon themselves what they please, by their corrupt imaginations, truth will ever keep its station; and as glory is nothing else but the shadow of virtue, it will certainly disappear at the departure of virtue.-Steele.

MCXXXV.

If we are told a man is religious, we still ask, what are his morals? But if we hear at first that he bas hos

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