to be angry; which ofttimes ends in choler, bitterness, and morosity; when the mind becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and like a thin, weak plate of iron, receives impression, and is wounded by the least occurrence.-Plutarch.

MCCLXXVIII.

It fares with men, in reference to their future estate, and the condition upon which they must pass to it, much as it does with a merchant having a vessel richly fraught at sea in a storm: the storm grows higher and higher, and threatens the utter loss of the ship: but there is one, and but one certain way to save it, which is, by throwing its rich lading overboard; yet still, for all this, the man knows not but possibly the storm may cease, and so all be preserved. However, in the mean time, there is little or no probability that it will do so; and in case it should not, he is then assured that he must lay his life as well as his rich commodities, in the cruel deep.-South.

MCCLXXIX.

Sweethearts are the things gypsies live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young jades among them: the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes.-Addison.

MCCLXXX.

Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd,
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:

But best is best, if never intermixed?

MCCLXXXI.

Shakspeare.

He that prefers the boasted excellence of ancient times, to the endearments and embellishments of modern life, may be charged with the depraved taste of the Hottentot, who, on his return to his native country, shook off the European dress, nauseated European food, and indulged in all the excesses of his countrymen.-Parr.

MCCLXXXII.

He that will undergo

To make a judgment of a woman's beauty,

And see through all her plasterings and paintings,
Had need of Lyceneus' eyes, and with more ease
May look, like him, through nine mud walls, than make
A true discovery of her.

MCCLXXXIII.

Massinger.

A poet, that fails in writing, becomes often a morose critic. The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.-Shenstone.

MCCLXXXIV.

The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in every thing and part with nothing.-South.

MCCLXXXV.

Poetry is the inseparable property of every man in love; and as men of wit write verses on those occasions, the rest of the world repeat the verses of others.— Hughes.

MCCLXXXVI.

A ship is not so long a-rigging, as a young girl is in trimming herself up against the arrival of her sweetheart. No painter's shop, no flowery meadow, no graceful aspect in the storehouse of nature, is comparable to a noviseta, or Venitian virgin, who is dressing for a husband. -Burton.

MCCLXXXVII.

Fetters, though made of gold,

Express base thraldom; and all delicates
Prepared by Median cooks for epicures,

When not our own, are bitter; quilts fill'd high
With gossamore and roses cannot yield

The body soft repose, the mind kept waking
With anguish and affliction.

MCCLXXXVIII.

Massinger.

The malecontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abound with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was,

once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaws of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees, he careth not for, because he cares so much for that which is not.-Hall.

MCCLXXXIX.

As it is not enough for a man to have a diamond unless it is polished and cut out into its due angles, and a foil be set underneath, whereby it may the better transmit and vibrate its native lustre and rays; so it will not be sufficient for a man to have a great understanding in all matters, unless the said understanding be not only polished and clear, but underset, and holpen a little with those figures, tropes, and colours, which rhetoric affords, where there is use of persuasion.—Lord Herbert. MCCXC.

Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails: it is a sort of insult on the company, and a constraint upon the speaker.-Swift.

MCCXCI.

The generality of mankind, either out of laziness, or diffidence of their being able to judge right in points that are not very clear, are apt rather to take things upon trust, than to give themselves the trouble to examine whether they be true or no; but, when they find what a man undertakes to give them for a demonstration is really none at all, they do not only conclude, that they are deceived by him, but begin to suspect they have been ill-used by those who first imposed upon them a notion, for which, perhaps, no demonstration can be given; and from this suspicion they run to another of a more dangerous consequence, that what is not demonstrable, may also not be true.-Buckingham.

MCCXCII.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. Within my own memory, I have known it rise and fall within thirty degrees.-Addison.

VOL. I.

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MCCXCIII.

From the expedition of some travellers we are not to conclude that knowledge of the world may be caught with a glance; or in other words, that they are geniuses, who "grasp a system by intuition." They might gain as much information if they skimmed over the continent with a balloon. The various places they fly through appear like the shifting scenes of a pantomime, which just catch the eye, and obliterate the faint impressions of each other. We are told of a noble Roman, who could recollect all the articles that had been purchased at an auction, and the names of the several buyers. The memory of our travellers ought to be of equal capacity and retentiveness, considering the short time they allow themselves for the inspection of curiosities.-Kett.

MCCXCIV.

Opinion governs all mankind,

Like the blind's leading of the blind;
For he that has no eyes in 's head
Must be by a dog glad to be led;
And no beasts have so little in 'em,
As that inhuman brute, opinion;
'Tis an infectious pestilence,
The tokens upon wit and sense,
That with a venomous contagion
Invades the sick imagination;
And when it seizes any part,
It strikes the poison to the heart.
This men of one another catch
By contact, as the humours match;
And nothing's so perverse in nature
As a profound opiniator.

МССХСУ.

Butler.

The propensity of rich and worthless people to appear with a splendour upon all occasions, puts me in mind of the country shopkeeper, who gilds his boxes in order to be the receptacle of pitch or tobacco. It is not unlike the management at our theatres-royal, where you see a piece of candle honoured with a crown.-Shenstone.

MCCXCVI.

The brain certainly is a great starver, where it abounds and the thinking people of the world (the philosophers and virtuosos especially) must be contented, I find, with a moderate share of bodily advantages, for the sake of what they call parts and capacity in another sense.Shaftesbury.

MCCXCVII.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the most mischievous.-Pope.

MCCXCVIII.

There are some men who are busy in idleness, and make the leisure of peace not only more troublesome, but even more wicked than the business of war.-Burton.

MCCXCIX.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.-Burke.

MCCC.

In marriage, he best bowls at the mark of his own contentment, who, besides the aim of his own eye, is directed by his father, who is to give him the ground.-Fuller.

MCCCI.

O the miserable

Condition of a prince; who, though he vary

More shapes than Proteus, in his mind and manners,
He cannot win a universal suffrage

From the many-headed monster, multitude!
Like Esop's foolish frogs they trample on him
As a senseless block, if his government be easy;
And, if he prove a stork, they croak and rail
Against him as a tyrant.

MCCCII.

Massinger.

Hair-dressers and tailors may be considered as Graces in league with Cupid; for all lovers are anxious to trick themselves out; to be spruce in their apparel; to have