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No matter now in virtue who excels,
He that hath coin, hath all perfection else.
Ben Jonson.

MCLV.

Philosophers say, that man is a microcosm, or a little world resembling in miniature every part of the great; and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic; and if this be so, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy.-Swift.

MCLVI.

The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made, as it were, too big for it; and extend themselves in the prospect of a longer existence, in good fame, and memory of worthy actions, after our decease.-Steele.

MCLVII.

We find but few historians in all ages, who have been diligent enough in their search for truth: it is their common method to take on trust what they distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.-Dryden.

MCLVIII. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do

appear; Robes, and furred gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: Arm it in rags, a pigmy straw doth pierce it.

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None has more frequent conversations with disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry credi

tors, continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.-Goldsmith.

MCLX.

Love's but the frailty of the mind,
When 'tis not with ambition join'd;

A sickly flame, which, if not fed, expires;
And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires.

MCLXI.

Congreve.

All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it, from the impossibility to escape it.-Steele.

MCLXII.

When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.-Addison.

MCLXIII.

There is nothing which must end, to be valued for its continuance. If hours, days, months, and years pass away, it is no matter what hour, what day, what month, or what year we die. The applause of a good actor is due to him at whatever scene of the play he makes his exit. It is thus in the life of a man of sense; a short life is sufficient to manifest himself a man of honour and virtue; when he ceases to be such, he has lived too long; and while he is such, it is of no consequence to him how long he shall be so, provided he is so to his life's end.Steele.

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So court a mistress, she denies you:
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly then,
Styl'd but the shadows of us men?

MCLXV.

Ben Jonson,

It has been said that he who retires to solitude is either a beast or an angel; the censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited; the discontented being, who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man, who has begun his life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind, -Goldsmith.

MCLXVI.

But she did scorn a present that I sent her.

A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her.
Send her another; never give her o'er;

For scorn at first makes after-love the more.
If she do frown, 'tis not in hate of you:
But rather to beget more love in you:
If she do chide, 'tis not to have you gone;
For why, the fools are mad, if left alone.
Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;
For, get you gone, she doth not mean, away:
Flatter, and praise, commend, extol their graces;
Though ne'er so black, say they have angel's faces,
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

MCLXVII.

Shakspeare.

Ovid, sen. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, what was he? what was he?

Tucca. Marry, I'll tell thee, old swaggerer: he was a poor, blind rhyming, rascal, that lived obscurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep.

Ovid, sen. You'll tell me his name shall live; and that

now being dead, his works have eternized him, and made him divine: but could his divinity feed him while he lived? could his name feast him?

Tucca. Or purchase him a senator's revenue, could it?

Ovid, sen. Aye, or give him place in the commonwealth? worship, or attendants? make him be carried in his litter?

Tucca. Thou speakest sentences, old Bias.

The Poetaster-Ben Jonson.

MCLXVIII.

It is safer to affront some people than to oblige them; for the better a man deserves, the worse they will speak of him; as if the professing of open hatred to their benefactors were an argument that they lie under no obligation.-Seneca.

MCLXIX.

Painters of history make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live.-Sir Godfrey Kneller→→ in defence of Portrait-painting.

MCLXX.

The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

MCLXXI.

Shakspeare.

To resist temptation once is not a sufficient proof of honesty. If a servant, indeed, were to resist the continued temptation of silver lying in a window, as some people let it lie, when he is sure his master does not know how much there is of it, he would give a strong proof of honesty. But this is a proof to which you have no right to put a man. You know, humanly speaking, there is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.-Johnson.

MCLXXII.

Madame Superbia,

You 're studying the lady's library,

The looking-glass: 'tis well, so great a beauty
Must have her ornaments: Nature adorns

Her peacock's tail with stars: 'tis she arrays
The bird of paradise in all her plumes,

She decks the fields with various flow'rs: 'tis she
Spangled the heavens with all their glorious lights;
She spotted th' ermine's skin, and arm'd the fish
In silver mail: but man she sent forth naked-
Not that he should remain so-but that he,
Guided with reason, should adorn himself
With every one of these. The silkworm is
Only man's spinster, else we might suspect
That she esteemed the painted butterfly
Above her masterpiece; you are the image
Of that bright goddess, therefore wear the jewels
Of the East-let the Red Sea be ransack'd
To make you glitter.

Colax to Philitomia, or the Proud Lady-Randolph.

MCLXXIII.

Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late: there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at.-Sterne.

MCLXXIV.

Critics are like a kind of flies that breed

In wild fig trees, and, when they 're grown up, feed
Upon the raw fruit of the nobler kind,
And by their nibbling on the outward rind,
Open the pores, and make way for the sun
To ripen it sooner than he would have done.

MCLXXV.

Butler.

The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself

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