Who, for the poor renown of being smart,
Would leave a sting within a brother's heart.
Parts may be praised, good nature is ador'd;
Then draw your wit as seldom as your sword,
And never on the weak; or you'll appear
As there no hero, no great genius here.
As in smooth oil the razor best is whet,
So wit is by politeness sharpest set,
Their want of edge from their offence is seen,
Both pain us least when exquisitely keen;
The fame men give is for the joy they find;
Dull is the jester, when the joke's unkind.

MXXVI.

Young.

The true art of assisting beauty, consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is, that those who are the favourite work of nature, or as Mr. Dryden expresses it, "the porcelain of human kind," become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms; and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable in a great measure of finishing what she has left imperfect.Hughes.

MXXVII.

To do justice to the French, there is no living language that abounds so much in good songs. The genius of the people, and the idiom of their tongue, seems adapted to compositions of this sort. Our writers generally crowd into one song, materials enough for several; and so they starve every thought, by endeavouring to nurse up more than one at a time.-Steele.

MXXVIII.

Promises was the ready money that was first coined and made current by the law of nature, to support that society and commerce that was necessary for the comfort and security of mankind.-Lord Clarendon.

MXXIX.

In cities, people are brought up in a total ignorance of, and blameable indifference for, country affairs; they can scarce distinguish flax from hemp, wheat from rye, and neither of them from barley: eating, drinking, and dressing are their qualifications; pastures, copses, aftergrass, inning harvest, are gothic words there. If to some of them you talk of weights, scales, measures, interest, and books of rates; to others of appeals, petitions, decrees, and injunctions, they will prick up their ears. They pretend to know the world, and, though it is more safe and commendable, are ignorant of nature, her beginnings, growths, gifts, and bounties. This ignorance is frequently voluntary, and founded on the conceit they have of their own callings and professions; there is not a pettifogger, who, in his sooty study, with his noddle full of wicked quibbles and destructive chicane, does not prefer himself to the valuable husbandman, who praises God, cultivates the earth, sows in season, and gathers his rich harvest; and if at any time the wretch hears talk of the first men, or the patriarchs, of their rural lives, their order and security, he wonders how there could be any living without attorneys, counsellors, judges and solicitors; whilst those of another cast think they must be queer mortals without billiards, operas, cards, balls, coffee-houses, and ordinaries.-Bruyere.

MXXX.

The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another to read his heart with.-Tatler.

MXXXI.

The solicitude of doing well, and a certain striving and contending of a mind too far strained and overbent upon its undertaking, breaks, and hinders itself, like water, that by force of its own pressing violence, and abundance, cannot find a ready issue through the neck of a bottle, or a narrow sluice.—Montaigne.

MXXXII.

Those travell'd youths, whom tender mothers wean, And send abroad to see, and to be seen;

With whom, lest they should fornicate, or worse,
A tutor's sent by way of a dry-nurse;
Each of whom just enough of spirit bears
To show our follies, and to bring home theirs,
Have made all Europe's vices so well known,
They seem almost as natʼral as our own.

MXXXIII.

Churchill.

The body of the law is encumbered with superfluous members, that are like Virgil's army, which he tells us was so crowded, many of them had not room to use their weapons. This prodigious society of men may be divided into the litigious and the peaceable. Under the first are comprehended all those that are carried down in coach-fulls to Westminster-hall, every morning in term time. Martial's description of this species of law; yer, is full of humour:

"Iras et verba locant."

"Men that hire out their words and anger;" and that are more or less passionate according as they are paid for it, and allow their client a quantity of wrath propor tionable to the fee which they receive from him. The peaceable lawyers are, in the first place, many of the benchers of the several inns of court, who seem to be the dignitaries of the law, and are rather endowed with those qualifications of mind, that accomplish a man rather for a ruler than a pleader. These men live peaceably in their habitations, eating once a day, and dancing once a year, for the honour of their respective societies. Another numberless branch of peaceable lawyers, are those young men, who being placed at the inns of court in order to study the laws of their country, frequent the play-house more than Westminster-hall, and are seen in all public assemblies, except in a court of justice. I shall say nothing of those silent and busy multitudes that are employed within doors in the drawing up of writings and conveyances; nor of those greater numbers that palliate their want of business, with a pretence to much chamber practice.-Addison.

VOL. I.

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MXXXIV.

To show the strength, and infamy of pride,
By all 'tis follow'd, and by all deny'd.
What numbers are there, which at once pursue
Praise, and the glory to contemn it, too?

MXXXV.

Young.

He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.-Lavater.

MXXXVI.

Let a man be never so ungrateful, or inhuman, he shall never destroy the satisfaction of my having done a good office.-Seneca.

MXXXVII.

Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age: so that our judgment grows harder to please, when we have fewer things to offer it: this goes through the whole commerce of life. When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not.—Swift.

MXXXVIII.

Spectators only on this bustling stage,
We see what vain designs mankind engage;

*

*

Armies embattled meet, and thousands bleed,
For some vile spot where fifty cannot feed;
Squirrels for nuts contend: and wrong or right,
For the world's empire kings ambitious fight.
What odds? to us, 'tis all the self-same thing,
A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.

MXXXIX.

Churchill.

Fashion, though powerful in all things, is not more so in any, than in being well or ill at court. There are times, when disgrace is a kind of fire, that purifies all bad qualities, and illuminates every good one. There are others, in which the being out of favour is unbecoming a man of character.--De Retz.

MXL.

Laughing at the misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it. Laughing satire bids the fairest for success. The world is too proud to be fond of a serious tutor; and when an author is in a passion, the laugh, generally, as in conversation, turns against him.—Young.

MXLI.

A man is not qualified for a butt, who has not a good deal of wit and vivacity, even in the ridiculous side of his character. A stupid butt is only fit for the conversation of ordinary people: men of wit require one that will give them play, and bestir himself in the absurd part of his behaviour. A butt with these accomplishments frequently gets the laugh on his side, and turns the ridicule upon him that attacks him. Sir John Falstaff was a hero of this species, and gives a good description of himself in his capacity of a butt, after the following manner:"Men of all sorts," says that merry knight, "take a pride to gird at me. The brain of man is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter more than I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."-Steele.

MXLII.

Our fathers prais'd rank venʼson. You suppose,
Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose.
Not so a buck was then a week's repast,
And 'twas their point, I ween, to make it last;
More pleased to keep it till their friends could come,
Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home.
Why had not I in those good times my birth,
Ere coxcomb-pies, or coxcombs were on earth?

MXLIII.

Pope.

When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony.-Swift.