and concerts; their puppet-shows, hobby-horses, tabors, bagpipes, balls, barley-breaks, and whatever sports and recreations please them best, provided they be followed with discretion.-Burton.

(Sailors)

MCXXXIV.

Hang consideration!
When this is spent is not our ship the same,
Our courage too the same, to fetch in more?
The earth, where it is fertilest, returns not
More than three harvests, while the glorious sun
Posts through the zodiac, and makes up the year:
But the sea, which is our mother, (that embraces
Both the rich Indies in her outstretch'd arms,)
Yields every day a crop if we dare reap it.
No, no, my mates, let tradesmen think of thrift,
And usurers hoard up; let our expense

Be as our comings in are, without bounds.
We are the Neptunes of the ocean;

And such as traffic shall pay sacrifice
Of their best lading.

MCXXXV.

Massinger.

The exercises I wholly condemn are dicing and carding, especially if you play for any great sum of money, or spend any time in them, or use to come to meetings in dicing-houses, where cheaters meet and cozen young gentlemen out of all their money.-Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

MCXXXVI.

If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendship in constant repair.Johnson.

MCXXXVII.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning?Swift.

MCXXXVIII.

Sin is the fruitful parent of distempers, and ill lives occasion good physicians.—South.

MCXXXIX.

The aim of all is but to nurse the life

With honour, wealth and ease, in waning age;
And in this aim there is such thwarting strife,
That one for all, or all for one we gage:
As life for honour in fell battles rage,
Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost
The death of all, and altogether lost.

So that in vent'ring all, we leave to be
The things we are for that which we expect:
And this ambitious foul infirmity,

In having much, torments us with defect
Of that we have; so then we do neglect
The thing we have, and all for want of wit,
Make something nothing by augmenting it.
Shakspeare.

MCXL.

It is of use to a man to understand not only how to overcome, but also to give ground, when to conquer, would rather turn to his disadvantage; for there is such a thing sometimes as a Cadmean victory; to which the wise Euripides attesteth, when he saith;

Where two discourse, if the one's anger rise
The man who lets the contest fall is wise.

MCXLI.

Plutarch.

I cannot represent our modern heroes and wits, vulgarly called sharpers, more naturally than under the shadow of a pack of dogs; for this set of men are, like them, made up of finders, lurchers, and setters.

Some

search for the prey, others pursue, others take it, and if it be worth it, they all come in at the death, and worry the carcase. It would require a most exact knowledge of the field and the harbours where the deer lie, to recount all the revolutions in the chase.-Swift.

MCXLII.

Neither the cold nor the fervid, but characters uniformly warm, are formed for friendship.-Lavater.

VOL. I.

U

MCXLIII.

Adventitious accomplishments may be professed by all ranks; but one may easily distinguish the born gentlewoman.-Johnson.

MCXLIV.

Such as are still observing upon others, are like those who are always abroad at other men's houses, reforming every thing there, while their own runs to ruin.-Pope.

MCXLV.

Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue!
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears

So well design'd, so luckily begun,

But, when we have our wish, we wish undone!

MCXLVI.

Dryden's Juvenal.

A man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.-Plutarch.

MCXLVII.

We worldly men, when we see friends and kinsmen,
Past hope, sunk in their fortunes, lend no hand
To lift them up, but rather set our feet
Upon their heads, to press them to the bottom.
Massinger.

MCXLVIII.

It is a dangerous thing to try new experiments in a government: men do not foresee the ill consequences that must happen, when they go about to alter the essential parts of it upon which the whole frame depends: for all governments are artificial things, and every part of them has a dependance one upon another. And it is with them as with clocks and watches, if you should put great wheels in the place of little ones, and little ones in

the place of great ones, all the movement would stand still: so that we cannot alter any part of a government without prejudicing the motions of the whole.-Buckingham.

MCXLIX.

Incessant minutes, whilst you move you tell

The time that tells our life, which though it run
Never so fast or far, your new begun

Short steps shall overtake; for though life well
May 'scape his own account, it shall not yours.
You are death's auditors, that both decide
And sum whate'er that life inspir'd endures,
Past a beginning; and through you we bide
The doom of fate, whose unrecall'd decree,
You date, bring, execute; making what's new,
Ill; and good, old; for as we die in you,
You die in time, time in eternity.

Lord Herbert to his Watch.

MCL.

We see every day volumes written against that tyrant of human life called love; and yet there is no help found against his cruelties, or barriers against the inroads he is pleased to make into the mind of man.-Tatler.

MCLI.

The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretence to claim.-Chesterfield.

MCLII.

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.-Swift.

MCLIII.

Ignorance of the languages is a great inducement to the English to associate together when abroad. The misfortune of this practice is, that they spend their time

in poisoning each other's minds with prejudices against foreigners of whom they know little from personal experience, and of whom they have not the laudable ambition of knowing more. Their more active employments consist in such employments as they have transplanted from home. They game, play at cricket, and ride races. The Frenchman gives a contemptuous smile at these exhibitions; and shrewdly remarks, that Monsieur John Bull travels more to divert him than to improve himself. Rather than give occasion for this ridicule, our young gentlemen had better remain at home upon their paternal estates, and collect their knowledge of other countries from Brydone's Tour, Moore's Travels, or Kearsley's Guides.-Kett.

MCLIV.

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age; but if they were united, the world could not stand before them.-Swift.

MCLV.

It is very difficult to praise a man without putting him out of countenance.-Addison.

MCLVI.

A cheat is a freeman of all trades, and all trades of his. Fraud and treachery are his calling, though his profession be integrity and truth. He spins nets, like a spider, out of his own entrails, to entrap the simple and unwary that light in his way, whom he devours and feeds upon. All the greater sort of cheats, being allowed by authority have lost their names, (as judges when they are called to the bench are no more styled lawyers,) and left the title to the meaner only, and the unallowed. The common ignorance of mankind is his province, which he orders to the best advantage. He is but a tame highwayman, that does the same thing by stratagem and design which the other does by force, makes men deliver their understandings first; and after their purses. Oaths and lies are his tools that he works with, and he gets his living by the drudgery of his conscience.

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