DCCLXXII. Of all tempers it requires least pain, Could we but rule ourselves, to rule the vain; The prudent is by reason only sway'd, With him each sentence and each word is weigh'd; DCCLXXIII. Stilling fleet. I do not mean to expose my ideas to ingenious ridicule by maintaining that every thing happens to every man for the best; but I will contend, that he, who makes the best use of it, fulfils the part of a wise and good man.Cumberland. DCCLXXIV. There is nothing which we receive with so much re luctance as advice. We look upon the man who gives it us as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one shows for our good on such an occasion as a piece of presumption or impertinence. The truth of it is, the person who pretends to advise, does, in that particular, exercise a superiority over us, and can have no other reason for it, but that, in comparing us with himself, he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding. For these reasons, there is nothing so difficult as the art of making advice agreeable; and indeed all the writers, both ancient and modern, have distinguished themselves among one another, according to the perfection at which they arrived in this art. How many devices have been made use of, to render this bitter portion palateable! Some convey their instructions to us in the best chosen words, others in the most harmonious numbers; some in point of wit, and others in short proverbs.—Addison. DCCLXXV. There is nothing in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing on the fiddle: in all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer: not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing.—Johnson. DCCLXXVI, Those who remember this Adage, Virtue is its own reward, will not be surprised at their poverty. This is prohibitory, instead of an encouraging sentence.-Zim merman. DCCLXXVII. He who has refused to live a villain, and has preferred death to a base action, has been a gainer by the bargain. -Shaftesbury. DCCLXXVIII. It was a wise policy in that false prophet Alexander, who, though now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first scene of his impostures in Paplagonia, where, as Lucian tells us, the people were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the grossest delusion.-Hume. DCCLXXIX. A coquet is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women; forgets that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young, now only makes her look the older. Affectation cleaves to her even in sickness and pain; she dies in a high-head and coloured ribbons.-Bruyere. DCCLXXX. I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.-Swift. DCCLXXXI. We ought in humanity no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help. Were this thoroughly considered, we should no more laugh at one for having his brains crack'd than for having his head broke. -Pope. DCCLXXXII. Some know no joy like what a word can raise, Stilling fleet's Essay on Conversation. DCCLXXXIII. Though some unhappy instances of frivolous duels have occurred, I cannot think that it is the vice of the times to be fond of quarrelling; the manners of our young men of distinction are certainly not of that cast, and if it lies with any of the present age, it is with those half made up gentry, who force their way into half-price plays in boots and spurs, and are clamorous in the passages of the front boxes of a crowded theatre.-Cumberland. DCCLXXXIV. People of an ordinary, low education, when they happen to fall into good company, imagine themselves the only subject of its attention; if the company whisper, it is, to be sure, concerning them; if they laugh, it is at them; and if any thing ambiguous, that by the most forced interpretation can be applied to them, happens to be said, they are convinced that it was meant at them; upon which they grow out of countenance first, and then angry. This mistake is very well ridiculed in the "Stratagem," where Scrub says, "I am sure they talked of me, for they laughed consumedly."-Chesterfield. DCCLXXXV. No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt.-Lord Clarendon. DCCXXXVI. Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise the last hour of our lives, to show the power she has in a moment to overthrow what she was so many years in building, making us cry out with Laberius, I have lived longer by this one day than I ought to have done.—Montaigne. DCCLXXXVII. The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.-Shenstone. DCCLXXXVIII. The stoical scheme of supplying our wants, by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.-Swift. DCCLXXXIX. Criticism is as often a trade, as a science; it requiring more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius. If a person who has less discernment than study, pretends to it, and takes in hand some subjects, he will but corrupt his own judgment as well as that of the readers.-Bruyere. DCCXC. More than just to other countries grown, Must we turn base apostates to our own? Where do the words of Greece and Rome excel, DCCXCI. Churchill. Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little superfluities of garniture and equipage. The blossoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed.-Steele. DCCXCII. Ovid finely compares a broken fortune to a falling column; the lower it sinks, the greater weight it is obliged to sustain. Thus, when a man's circumstances are such, that he has no occason to borrow, he finds numbers willing to lend him; but should his wants be such, that he sues for a trifle, it is two to one whether he may be trusted with the smallest sum.-Goldsmith. DCCXCIII. If a man laments in company, where the rest are in humour enough to enjoy themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or posset drink, by way of admonition that home to bed.-Spectator. he go DCCXCIV. No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.-Johnson. DCCXCV. -They that creep and they that fly VOL. I. |