MCCCLI. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time: we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that: whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city.-Cowley. MCCCLII. Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense.-Zimmerman. MCCCLIII. A shark is one whom all other means have failed, and now he lives of himself. He is some needy cashiered fellow, whom the world hath oft flung off, yet still clasps again, and is like one a drowning, fastens upon any thing that is next at hand. Amongst other of his shipwrecks he has happily lost shame, and this want supplies him. No man puts his brain to more use than he, for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new stratagem. He has an excellent memory for his acquaintance; though there passed but how do you betwixt them seven years ago, it shall suffice for an embrace, and that for money. He offers you a pottle of sack out of joy to see you, and in requital of his courtesy you can do no less than pay for it. He is fumbling with his purse-strings, as a schoolboy with his points, when he is going to be whipped, till the master, weary with long stay, forgives him. When the reckoning is paid, he says, it must not be so, yet is straight pacified, and cries, What remedy? His borrowings are like subsidies, each man a shilling or two, as he can well dispend; which they lend him, not with a hope to be repaid, but that he will come no more. He holds a strange tyranny over men, for he is their debtor, and they fear him as their creditor. He is proud of any employment, though it be but to carry commendations, which he They in will be sure to deliver at eleven of the clock. courtesy bid him stay, and he in manners cannot deny them. If he find but a good look to assure his welcome, he becomes their half-boarder, and haunts the threshold so long till he forces good nature to the necessity of a quarrel. Public invitations he will not wrong with his absence, and is the best witness of the sheriff's hospitality. Men shun him at length as they would do an infection, and he is never crossed in his way if there be but a lane to escape him. He has done with the age as his clothes to him, hung on as long as he could, and at last drops off.-Bishop Earle. MCCCLIV. Happy are those, That knowing, in their births, they are subject to And with much labour learn'd in wisdom's school. MCCCLV. Massinger. They are the same beams that shine and enlighten, and are apt to scorch too, and it is impossible for a man engaged in any wicked way, to have a clear understanding of it, and a quiet mind in it altogether.-South. MCCCLVI. Bodily labour is of two kinds, either that which a man submits to for his livelihood, or that which he undergoes for his pleasure. The latter of them generally changes the name of labour for that of exercise, but differs only from ordinary labour as it rises from another motive. A country life abounds in both these kinds of labour, and for that reason gives a man a greater stock of health, and consequently a more perfect enjoyment of himself, than any other way of life. I consider the body as a system of tubes and glands, or to use a more rustic phrase, a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all sides with invisible glands or strainers.-Addison. MCCCLVII. All writers, though of diff'rent fancies, But only want and discontent. MCCCLVIII. Butler. Conscience is a great leger book, in which all our offences are written and registered, and which time reveals to the sense and feeling of the offender.-Burton. MCCCLIX. People say, "Do not regard what he says, now he is in liquor." Perhaps it is the only time he ought to be regarded: "Aperit præcordia liber,"-Shenstone. MCCCLX. Wines, the stronger they be, the more lees they have when they are new. Many boyes are muddy-headed till they be clarified with age, and such afterwards prove the best. Bristoll diamonds are both bright, and squared and pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthlesse; whereas Orient ones in India are rough, and rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and dull natures of youth acquit themselves afterwards the jewells of the countrey, and therefore their dulnesse at first is to be borne with, if they be diligent. That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself who beats nature in a boy, for a fault. And I question whether all the whipping in the world an make their parts, which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before the houre Nature hath appointed.— Fuller. MCCCLXI. A right mind and generous affection hath more beauty and charms than all other symmetries in the world besides: and a grain of honesty and native worth is of more value than all the adventitious ornaments, estates, or preferments; for the sake of which some of the better sort so oft turn knaves; forsaking their principles, and quitting their honour and freedom for a mean, timorous, shifting state of gaudy servitude.-Shaftesbury. MCCCLXII. Virtue, though in rags, may challenge more than vice set off with all the trim of greatness.-Massinger. MCCCLXIII. Ethics make a man's soul mannerly and wise; but logic is the armoury of reason, furnisht with all offensive and defensive weapons.-Fuller. MCCCLXIV. Indolence is, methinks, an intermediate state between pleasure and pain, and very much unbecoming any part of our life after we are out of the nurse's arms.- -Steele. MCCCLXV. It fares with religion as with a shuttlecock, which is stricken from one to another, and rests with none. The rich apprehend it to have been designed for the poor; and the poor, in their turn, think it calculated chiefly for the rich. An old acquaintance of mine, who omitted no opportunity of doing good, discoursed with the barber who shaved him on his manner of spending the sabbath, (which was not quite as it should be,) and the necessity of his having more religion than he seemed at present possessed of. The barber proceeding in his work of lathering, replied, "that he had tolerably well for a barber; as, in his apprehension, one-third of the religion necessary to save a gentleman would do to save a barber."-Bishop Horne. MCCCLXVI. Some call it fury, some a muse, And when he's in, he's out of 's wits. MCCCLXVII. Butler. The most consummate selfishness would incline a person, at his death, to dispose of his effects agreeably to duty, that he may secure an interest in the world to which he is going.—Shenstone. MCCCLXVIII. Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.-Lavater. MCCCLXIX. Men of extraordinary tallnesse (though otherwise little deserving,) are made porters to lords; and those of unusuall littlenesse are made ladies' dwarfs, whilst men of moderate stature may want masters. Thus, many notorious for extremities, may find favourers to preferre them, whilest moderate men in the middle truth, may want any to advance them. But what saith the apostle? "If in this life onely we had hope, we are of all men the most miserable."-Fuller. MCCCLXX. The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie: say but little, 'twill scarcely gain belief; so strong are partiality and envy.-Zimmerman. MCCCLXXI. Some weak men think the death of a young boy ought to be borne with patience; but should an infant in the cradle happen to die, there is not the least ground of complaint. And yet, in this last case, nature exerts her love more vigorously than in the other. Ay, but say they, the latter had not as yet tasted the sweetness of life; whereas the other had entertained very great ex |