connect us closer. Wherever I disesteemed, I would abdicate my first-cousin.-Shenstone. MCCXVIII. A degree of luxury may be ruinous and pernicious in a native of Switzerland, which only fosters the arts, and encourages industry, in a Frenchman or Englishman. We are not, therefore, to expect, either the same sentiments or the same laws in Berne, which prevail in London or Paris.-Hume. (Beauty.) MCCXIX. There's no miniature In her fair face, but is a copious theme Which would, discours'd at large of, make a volume. What clear arch'd brows! what sparkling eyes! the lilies Contending with the roses in her cheeks Who shall most set them off. What ruby lips;- MCCXX. Massinger. A common-place book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories;" and whereas, on the other hand, poets being liars by profession, ought to have good memories.-Swift. MCCXXI. There is a practice as common as dangerous, amongst country people, who having received the goods that were stolen from them, partly out of foolish pity, and partly out of covetousness to save charges in prosecuting the law, yet the thief remains unpunished. Thus, whilst private losses are repaired, the wounds to the commmonwealth (in the breach of the laws) are left uncured; and thus petty larceners are encouraged into felons, and after wards are hanged for pounds, because never whipt for pence; who, if they had felt the cord, had never been brought to the halter.-Fuller. MCCXXII. Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man, in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.-Johnson. MCCXXIII. Should once the world resolve t' abolish MCCXXIV. Butler. Evasions are the common shelter of the hard-hearted, the false, and impotent, when called upon to assist; the real great alone plan instantaneous help, even when their looks or words, presage difficulties.-Lavater. MCCXXV. Jeremy. Sir, you're a gentleman, and probably understand fine feeding; but, if you please, I had rather be at board-wages. Does your Epictetus, or your Seneca here, or any of these poor rich rogues, teach you how to pay your debts without money? will they shut up the mouths of your creditors? will Plato be bail for you? or Diogenes, because he understands confinement, and lived in a tub, go to prison for you? 'Slife? sir, what do you mean, to mew yourself up here with three or four musty books, in commendation of starving and poverty? Valentine. Why, sirrah, I have no money, you know it; and therefore resolve to rail at all that have: and in that I but follow the examples of the wisest and wittiest men in all ages-these poets and philosophers, whom you naturally hate, for just such another reason; because they abound in sense, and you are a fool. Jeremy. Ay, sir, I am a fool, I know it; and yet, heaven help me! I'm poor enough to be a wit. But I was always a fool, when I told you what your expenses would bring you to; your coaches and your liveries; your treats and your balls; your being in love with a lady, that did not care a farthing for you in your prosperity; and keeping company with wits, that cared for nothing but your prosperity, and now when you are poor, hate you as much as they do one another.-Love for Love.Congreve. MCCXXVI. -Man was mark'd And may with fit ambition conceive The greatest blessings, and the highest honours MCCXXVII. - Massinger. If the birth of the true gentleman be not, at least his qualities are, generous. What if he cannot with the Hevenninghams of Suffolk count five-and twenty knights of his family, or tell sixteen knights successively with the Tilneys of Norfolk, or with the Nauntons show where their ancestors had seven hundred pounds a year before or at the conquest; yet he hath endeavoured by his own deserts to ennoble himself. Thus valour makes him son to Cæsar, learning entitles him kinsman to Tully, and pity reports him nephew to godly Constantine. It graceth a gentleman of low descent, and high desert, when he will own the meanness of his parentage, which some seventy years since shined in Cassiopea. But if he be generously born see how his parents breed him.-Fuller. MCCXXVIII. Set him down as your inferior who listens to you in a tete a tete, and contradicts you when a third appears.Lavater. MCCXXIX. More proselytes and converts use t' accrue For error and mistake are infinite, But never to be reduced to less than one. MCCXXX. Butler. Smiles are powerful orators, and may convey, though in silence, matters of great signification to the heart. But they may also lead a lover into a fool's paradise; for there are many who, if they do but see a fair maid laugh, or show a pleasant countenance, immediately fancy it a favour, bestowed peculiarly on themselves.-Burton. MCCXXXI. Were the books of our best authors to be retailed in distinct sheets to the public, and every page submitted to the taste of forty or fifty thousand readers, I am afraid we should complain of many flat expressions, trivial observations, beaten topics, and common thoughts, which go off very well in the lump. At the same time, notwithstanding some papers may be made up of broken hints and irregular sketches, it is often expected that every sheet should be a kind of treatise, and make out in thought what it wants in bulk: that a point of humour should be worked up in all its parts; and a subject touched upon in its most essential articles, without the repetitions, tautologies, and enlargements, that are indulged to longer labours.-Addison. MCCXXXII. A child is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam, before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his character. His soul is yet a white paper unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity. His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath oulived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God. He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.--Bishop Earle. MCCXXXIII. If I could choose my readers, I would not wish the most ignorant or the most learned to read my works; not the former, for they would not do me justice, and not the latter, because I could not sufficiently please them.-Lucilius. MCCXXXIV. Man is to man all kind of beasts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile; a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. -Cowley. MCCXXXV. Repentance hath a purifying power, and every tear is of a cleansing virtue; but these penitential clouds must be still kept dropping; one shower will not suffice; for repentance is not one single action, but a course.-South. MCCXXXVI. The metaphysic's but a puppet motion |