Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

tended philosophy which enters into the depth of things, and then comes back gravely with informations and discoveries, that in the inside they are good for nothing.— Swift.

XL.

How often at our theatre, has the tear of sympathy and burst of laughter been repressed by a malignant species of pride, refusing approbation to the author and actor, and renouncing society with the audience.-Smollet.

XLI.

In tragedy, the poet who flourished in the scene, is damned in the ruelle; nay more, is not esteemed a good poet, by those who see and hear his extravagances with delight. They are a sort of stately fustian and lofty childishness. Nothing but nature can give a sincere pleasure: where that is not imitated, 'tis grotesque painting; the fine woman ends in a fish's tail.-Dryden.

XLII.

When a philosopher has once laid hold of a favourite principle, which, perhaps, accounts for many natural effects, he extends the same principle over the whole creation, and reduces it to every phenomenon, though by the most violent and absurd reasoning. Our own mind being narrow and contracted, we cannot extend our conception to the variety and extent of nature; but imagine that she is as much bounded in her operations as we are in our speculation.-Hume.

XLIII.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.-Addison.

XLIV.

To be a beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groat he is worth; so, before one commence a true critic, it will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind,

which, perhaps, for a less purchase, would be thought but an indifferent bargain.-Swift.

XLV.

Nothing is more evident than that divers persons, no other way remarkable, have each a strong disposition to the formation of some particular trope or figure. Aristotle saith that the hyperbole is an ornament fit for young men of quality; accordingly, we find in those gentlemen a wonderful propensity towards it, which is marvellously improved by travelling. Soldiers also and seamen are happy in the same figure. The periphrasis or circumlocution is the peculiar talent of country farmers; the prologue and apologue, of old men at clubs; the illipsis, or speech by half words, of ministers and politicians: the aposiopesis, of courtiers; the liotes and diminution of ladies, whisperers, and backbiters; and the andiplosis, of common criers and hawkers, who, by redoubling the same words, persuade people to buy their oysters, green hastings, or new ballads. Epithets may be found in great plenty at Billingsgate; sarcasm and irony learned upon the water; and the epiphonema or exclamation frequently from the bear-garden, and as frequently from the "hear him," of the house of commons.-Pope.

XLVI.

-Slander lives upon succession;

For ever hous'd when once it gets possession.

XLVII.

Shakspeare.

Pride, treachery, envy, hypocrisy, malice, cruelty, and self-love, may have been said, in one shape or other, to have occasioned all the frauds and mischiefs that ever happened in the world: but the chances against a coincidence of them all in one person are so many, that one would have supposed the character of a common slanderer as rare and difficult a production in nature, as that of a great genius, which seldom happens above once in an age.-Sterne.

XLVIII.

Some reserve is a debt to prudence, as freedom and simplicity of conversation is a debt to good nature.—— Shenstone.

XLIX.

No man is the wiser for his learning: it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man.-Selden.

L.

Learning once made popular is no longer learning; it has the appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.-Johnson.

LI.

Mankind may be divided into the merry and the serious, who, both of them, make a very good figure in the species, so long as they keep their respective humours from degenerating into the neighbouring extreme; there being a natural tendency in the one to a melancholy moroseness, and in the other to a fantastic levity.Addison.

LII.

The best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities: and, were the accidental oversights and folly of the wisest man,-the failings and imperfections of a religious man,-the hasty acts and passionate words of a meek man;-were they to rise up in judgment against them,-and an ill-natured judge be suffered to mark, in this manner, what has been done amiss-what character so unexceptionable as to be able to stand before him?-Sterne.

LIII.

There is a time which precedes reason, when, like other animals, we live by instinct alone; of which the memory retains no vestiges. There is a second term, when reason discovers itself, when it is formed, and might act, if it were not hoodwinked as it were, and

manacled by vices of the constitution, and a chain of passions, which succeed one another, till the third and last age: reason then being in its full force, naturally should assert its dignity, and control the appetites; but it is impaired, and benumbed by years, sickness, and pains, and shattered by the disorder of the declining machine: yet these years, with their several imperfections, constitute the life of man.-Bruyere.

LIV.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders generally discover every body's face but their own;-which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.Swift.

LV.

A man's genius is always, in the beginning of life, as much unknown to himself as to others; and it is only after frequent trials, attended with success, that he dares think himself equal to those undertakings in which those who have succeeded have fixed the admiration of mankind.— Hume.

LVI.

How many languages are there which you do not understand: with regard to all these you are as if you were deaf; yet you are indifferent about the matter. Is it then so great a misfortune to be deaf to one language more?Cicero.

LVII.

The fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be cheated of a third part of their estates; two other thirds they must expend in vanity; so that they remain debtors for all the necessary provisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts, but out of the succours and supplies of rapine. "As riches increase," says Solomon, so do the mouths that devour them. The master mouth has no more than before. The owner, methinks, is like Ocnus in the fa

[ocr errors]

ble, who is perpetually winding a rope of hay, and an ass at the end perpetually eating it.-Cowley.

LVIII.

Secrets are so seldom kept, that it may be with some reason doubted, whether the quality of retention be so generally bestowed, and whether a secret has not some subtle volatility by which it escapes, imperceptibly, at the smallest vent, or some power of fermentation, by which it expands itself, so as to burst the heart that will not give it way.-Johnson.

LIX.

Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.-Shenstone.

LX.

A prince wants only the pleasure of private life to complete his happiness; a loss that nothing can compensate but the fidelity of his select friends, and the applause of rejoicing subjects.—Bruyere.

LXI.

If all the happiness that is dispersed through the whole race of mankind in this world were drawn together, and put into the possession of any single man, it would not make a very happy being. Though on the contrary, if the miseries of the whole species were fixed in a single person, they would make a very miserable one.-Addison.

LXII.

Objects have absolutely no worth or value in themselves. They derive their worth merely from the passion. If that be strong, and steady, and successful, the person is happy. It cannot reasonably be doubted, but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence,

« PředchozíPokračovat »