DCLXXI.

Such is the disposition of mankind, if they cannot blast the action, they will censure the vanity.-Melmoth.

DCLXXII.

If promises from man to man have force, why not from man to woman? Their very weakness is the charter of their power, and they should not be injured, because they can't return it.—Farquhar.

DCLXXIII.

Debauched from nature, how can we relish her genuine productions? As well might a man distinguish objects through the medium of a prism, that presents nothing but a variety of colours to the eye; or a maid pining in the green sickness prefer a biscuit to a cinder.Smollet.

DCLXXIV.

Democritus, who was always laughing, lived one hundred and nine years; Heraclitus, who never ceased crying, only sixty. Laughing then is best; and to laugh at another is perfectly justifiable, since we are told that the gods themselves, though they made us as they pleased, cannot help laughing at us.-Stevens.

DCLXXV.

What stubbing, ploughing, digging, and harrowing, is to land, that thinking, reflecting, examining, is to the mind. Each has its proper culture; and as the land that is suffered to lie waste and wild for a long time, will be overspread with brushwood, brambles, thorns, and such vegetables, which have neither use nor beauty, so there will not fail to sprout up in a neglected, uncultivated mind, a great number of prejudices and absurd opinions, which owe their origin partly to the soil itself, the passions, and imperfections of the mind of man, and partly to those seeds which chance to be scattered in it, by every wind of doctrine, which the cunning of statesmen, the singularity of pedants, and the superstition of fools shall raise.-Berkeley.

VOL. I.

M

DCLXXVI.

Above all things raillery decline,
Nature but few does for that task design:
'Tis in the ablest hands a dangerous tool,
But never fails to wound the meddling fool;
For all must grant it needs no common art
To keep men patient when we make them smart.
Not wit alone, nor humour's self, will do,
Without good nature, and much prudence too,
To judge aright of persons, place, and time;
For taste decrees what's low, and what's sublime;
And what might charm to-day, or o'er a glass,
Perhaps at court, or next day, would not pass,
Stilling fleet.

DCLXXVII.

We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls; the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth: these produce the agreeable and profitable; these are conversant in commerce, finances, war, navigation, arts, trades, intrigue, society, and conversation.-Bruyere.

DCLXXVIII.

A man is by nothing so much himself, as by his temper and the character of his passions and affections. If he loses what is manly and worthy in these, he is as much lost to himself, as when he loses his memory and understanding.-Shaftesbury.

DCLXXIX.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labour of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.-Pope.

DCLXXX.

Criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the intellect, is ever held the truest and the best, when it is the very first result of the critic's mind; as fowlers reckon the

first aim for the surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark, if they stay not for the second.-Swift.

DCLXXXI.

From his youth upwards to the present day

When vices, more than years, have mark'd him gray,
When riotous excess, with wasteful hand,

Shakes life's frail glass, and hastes each ebbing sand,
Unmindful from what stock he drew his birth,
Untainted with one deed of real worth,
Lothario, holding honour at no price,
Folly to folly added, vice to vice,

Wrought sin with greediness and sought for shame
With greater zeal than good men seek for fame.
Where (reason left without the least defence)
Laughter was mirth, obscenity was sense;

Where impudence made decency submit;

Where noise was humour, and where whim was wit;
Where rude untemper'd license had the merit
Of liberty, and lunacy was spirit;

Where the best things were ever held the worst,
Lothario was, with justice, always first.

To whip a top, to knuckle down at taw,
To swing upon a gate, to ride a straw,
To play at push-pin with dull brother peers,
To belch out catches in a porter's ears,
To reign the monarch of a midnight cell,
To be the gaping chairman's oracle;
Whilst, in most blessed union, rogue and w
Clap hands, huzza, and hiccup out-encore;
Whilst gray authority, who slumbers there
In robes of watchman's fur, gives up his chair;
With midnight howl to bay th' affrighted moon,
To walk with torches through the streets at noon;
To force plain nature from her usual way,
Each night a vigil, and a blank each day;
To match for speed one feather 'gainst another,
To make one leg run races with his brother;
'Gainst all the rest to take the northern wind,
Bute to ride first; and he to ride behind;

To coin newfangled wagers, and to lay them Laying to lose, and losing not to pay them; Lothario, on that stock which nature gives, Without a rival stands, though March* yet lives. Churchill.

DCLXXXII.

It was the maxim of a very wise prince, that "he who knows not how to dissemble, knows not how to reign:" and I desire that you would receive it as mine, that he who knows not how to riddle, knows not how to live.Fitzosborne's Letters.

DCLXXXIII.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say that gravity was an errant scoundrel; and he would add, of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven.-Yorick's opinion of Gravity.-Sterne.

DCLXXXIV.

Women never truly command till they have given their promise to obey; and they are never in more danger of being made slaves, than when they are at the feet of men.-Farquhar.

DCLXXXV.

Raillery and wit were never made to answer our inquiries after truth, and to determine a question of rational controversy, though they may be sometimes serviceable to expose to contempt those inconsistent follies which have been first abundantly refuted by argument; they serve indeed only to cover nonsense with shame, when reason has first proved it to be mere nonsense.― Wutts.

DCXXXVI.

The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.-Hugo.

*Lord March, famous for his libertinism,

DCLXXXVII.

I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit, and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch, and tumbling into it.-Johnson.

DCLXXXVIII.

What numbers live to the age of fifty or sixty years! yet, if estimated by their merit, are not worth the price of a chick the moment it is hatched.-Shenstone.

DCLXXXIX.

For

"The chief end," says Swift, in a letter to Mr. Pope, "I propose to myself in all my labours, is to vex the world, rather than divert it; and, if I could compass that design, without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen. I have ever hated all nations, professions, communities; and all my love is towards individuals. instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love counsellor such-a-one, and judge such-a-one: 'Tis so with physicians, (I will not speak of my own trade,) soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally, I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, (but do not tell,) and so I shall go on, till I have done with them."—Pope's Works.

DCXC.

He that embarks in the voyage of life will always wish to advance, rather by the impulse of the wind, than the strokes of the oar; and many founder in their passage, while they lie waiting for the gale.—Johnson.

DCXCI.

Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire.-Addison.