DCXLII.

Education at our public schools and universities is travelling in a wagon for expedition, where there is a bridle road that will take you by a short cut to Parnassus, and the polisher has got the key of it; he has elocution for all customers, lawyers, players, parsons, or senators; ready-made talents for all professions, the bar, the stage, the pulpit, or the parliament.-Cumberland.

DCXLIII.

There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven.—Montaigne.

DCXLIV.

Princesses, more illustrious for the blood that lightens in their cheeks, than for that which runs in their veins, like victorious monarchs, can conquer at a distance, and captivate by proxy.—Boyle.

DCXLV.

Men of wit and confidence will always make a shift to say something for any thing; and some way or other blanch over the most absurd things in the world.— Tillotson.

DCXLVI.

Had Tully himself pronounced one of his orations with a blanket about his shoulders, more people would have laughed at his dress than have admired his eloquence. -Spectator.

DCXLVII.

At the theatre, when I see a fine woman's face unaltered by the distress of the scene, with which I myself am affected, I resent her indifference as an insult on my own understanding: I suppose her to be savage, her disposition unsocial, her organs indelicate, and exclaim with the fox in the fable, O pulchrum caput, sed cerebrum non habet.-Smollet.

DCXLVIII.

How few are found with real talents blest!
Fewer with nature's gifts contented rest.

Man from his sphere eccentric starts astray;
All hunt for fame, but most mistake the way.

DCXLIX.

Churchill.

Whereas the time and space of life is very short that is given unto man; as short as it is, yet sleep, as Ariston saith, like unto a false baily or publican, taketh the half thereof for itself.-Holland's Plutarch.

DCL.

If life a hundred years, or e'er so few,
'Tis repetition all, and nothing new:

A fair where thousands meet, but none can stay,
An inn where travellers bait, then post away.

DCLI.

Fawkes.

A dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.-Pliny.

DCLII.

The world's a hive,

From whence thou canst derive.
No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings:
But case thou meet

Some petty-petty sweet,

Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.

DCLIII.

Quarles.

He that is himself weary, will soon weary the public. Let him, therefore, lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention. Let him not endeavour to struggle with censure or obstinately infest the stage, till a general hiss commands him to depart.-Johnson.

DCLIV.

To feel the want of reason is next to having it; an idiot is not capable of this sensation. The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.-Bruyere.

DCLV.

When men comfort themselves with philosophy, 'tis not because they have got two or three sentences, but because they have digested those sentences, and made them their own; so upon the matter, philosophy is nothing but discretion.-Selden.

DCLVI.

The true art of raillery is, when a man turns another into ridicule, and shows at the same time that he is in good humour, and not urged on by malice against the person he rallies.-Swift.

DCLVII.

The woman that has not touched the heart of a man, before he leads her to the altar, has scarcely a chance to charm it, when possession and security turn their powerful arms against her.-Mrs. Cowley.

DCLVIII.

No man's body is as strong as his appetites, but heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities. The pleasure of the religious man is an easy and a portable pleasure, such as he can carry about in his bosom. A man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a traveller putting all his goods into one jewel, the value is the same, and the convenience greater.-Tillot

son.

DCLIX.

The admiral of Castile said, that he who marries a wife and he who goes to war, must necessarily submit to every thing that may happen.-From the Italian.

DCLX.

To-morrow you will live, you always cry.
In what far country does this morrow lie,
That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive?
Beyond the Indies does this morrow live?
'Tis so far fetch'd this morrow, that I fear
"Twill be both very old and very dear.

To-morrow I will live, the fool does say:

To-day itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday.

DCLXI.

Martial.

What a chimera is man! what a confused chaos! what a subject of contradiction! a professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth! the great depositary and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty! the glory and the scandal of the universe!-Pascal.

DCLXII.

News-writers by profession, are the rudest brawlers for liberty, a subject which they seem to have considered least of any.-Joineriana, 1772.

DCLXIII.

It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheaters, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of a good will.-Sallust.

DCLXIV.

Enthusiasm is a beneficent enchantress, who never exerts her magic but to our advantage, and only deals about her friendly spells, in order to raise imaginary beauties, or to improve real ones. The worst that can be said of her is, that she is a kind deceiver, and an obliging flatterer.-Fitzosborne.

DCLXV.

Good-breeding carries along with it a dignity, that is respected by the most petulant. Ill-breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one (though many a flattering one) to Sir Robert Walpole.-Chesterfield.

DCLXVI.

Some satirical wits and humourists, like their father Lucian, laugh at every thing indiscriminately; which

betrays such a poverty of wit, as cannot afford to part with any thing; and such a want of virtue, as to postpone it to a jest. They that are for lessening the true dignity of mankind, are not sure of being successful, but with regard to one individual in it. It is this conduct that justly makes wit a term of reproach.— Young.

DCLXVII.

A man may say with some colour of truth, that there is an Abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a Doctoral ignorance that comes after it; an ignorance which knowledge creates and begets at the same time that she despatches and destroys the first.-Montaigne.

DCLXVIII.

Who taught the parrot human notes to try,
Or with a voice endu'd the chattering pie
'Twas mighty want, fierce hunger to appease:
Want taught their masters, and their masters these.
Let gain, that gilded bait, be hung on high,
The hungry witlings have it in their eye:
Pies, crows, and daws, poetic presents bring:
You say they squeak, but they will swear they sing.

DCLXIX.

Dryden.

The worse living authors fare now, the better they will succeed with posterity; for the critics love the sport too well to hunt any but those who can stand a good chase; and authors are the only objects in nature, which are magnified by distance, and diminished by approach. -Cumberland.

DCLXX.

Bombastry and buffoonery, by nature lofty and light, soar highest of all, and would be lost in the roof (of the theatre) if the prudent architect had not with much more foresight contrived for them a fourth place, called the twelve-penny gallery, and there planted a suitable colony, who greedily intercept them in their passage.—