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CCLXXXII.

Controversial writing is not wholly unprofitable; and book merchants of whatever kind or degree, undoubtedly receive no small advantage from a right improvement of a learned scuffle. Nothing revives them more, or makes a quicker trade, than a pair of substantial divines or grave philosophers, well matched, and soundly backed; till, by long worrying one another, they are grown out of breath, and have almost lost their force of writing.-Shaftesbury.

CCLXXXIII.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.-Lord Bacon.

CCLXXXIV.

To judge rightly of our own worth, we should retire a little from the world, to see its pleasures-and pains too, in their proper size and dimensions; this, no doubt, was the reason, St. Paul, when he intended to convert Felix, began his discourse upon the day of judgment, on purpose to take the heart from off this world and its pleasures, which dishonour the understanding so as to turn the wisest of men into fools and children.-Sterne.

CCLXXXV.

Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news? If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.-Addison.

CCLXXXVI.

In whatever country a man may hide himself, fortune and the malice of evil men will be sure to find him out: for which reason, says he, the soul ought to withdraw itself, into its impregnable fortress of constancy, whence

if it looks with contempt on all human things, the darts which fortune and the world shall throw at him, will fall innoxious at his feet.-Seneca.

CCLXXXVII.

Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the further on we go, the more we have to come back.-Barrow.

CCLXXXVIII.

Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase, Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.

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Every one must see and feel, that bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions; and that if the latter only are forbidden, and the former left free, all morality will soon be at an end.-Porteus.

CCXC.

Try a good poem as you would sound a pipkin; and if it rings well upon the knuckle, be sure there is no flaw in it. Verse without rhyme is a body without soul, (for "the chief lie consisteth in the rhyme,") or a bell without a clapper; which, in strictness, is no bell, as being neither of use nor delight.-Swift.

CCXCI.

As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and fills up the chasms of thought with ideas of what is past, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the pas

sions of hope and fear.-Spectator.

CCXCII.

-They who write, because all write, have still

Th' excuse for writing, and for writing ill,

But he is worst, who beggarly doth chaw

Other wits' fruit.

CCXCIII.

Donne.

It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, nothing in their mouths.-Sullust.

CCXCIV.

Little that is truly noble can be expected from one who is ever poring on his cash-book, or balancing his accounts. Spectator.

CCXCV.

Ah! how Sophia, can you leave me
Your lover, and of hope bereave!
Go fetch the Indian's borrowed plume,
Yet richer far than that you bloom.
I'm but a lodger in your heart:
And more than me, I fear, have part.

CCXCVI.

Calcott.

"Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle," says the poet: or at best the keepers of cattle for other men; they have nothing which is properly their own; that is a sufficient mortification for me, while I am translating Virgil. -Dryden.

CCXCVII.

Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly on to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight.— Johnson.

CCXCVIII.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Shakspeare.

ССХСІХ.

To correct the particular faults of private men, would be a work too infinite; yet some there be of that nature, that though they be in private men, yet their evil reacheth to the general hurt, as the extortion of sheriffs, and their sub-sheriffs and bailiffs, the corruption of victuallers, &c.-Spenser.

CCC.

Our studies will be for ever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travellers we must take what we can get, and when we can get it.—Sir J. Reynolds.

CCCI.

Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those

virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend; but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.-Spectator.

CCCII.

There is nothing in itself valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.-Hume.

CCCIII.

Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.-Addison.

CCCIV.

Look on this globe of earth, and you will find it to be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is that which some call land, but a fine coat faced with green? or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby?-Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux. Observe how sparkish a peruke adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trimmings.—Swift.

CCCV.

Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters: some are mere letters, some contain entire words, lines, whole pages, which at once decipher the life of a man. One such genuine uninterrupted page may be your key to all the rest; but first be certain that he wrote it all alone, and without thinking of publisher or reader.-Lavater.

CCCVI.

The paths of virtue are plain and straight, so that the blind, persons of the meanest capacity, shall not err.VOL, I.

F

Dishonesty requires skill to conduct it, and as great art to conceal-what 'tis every one's interest to detect. And I think I need not remind you how oft it happens in attempts of this kind-where worldly men, in haste to be rich, have overrun the only means to it,-and for want of laying their contrivances with proper cunning, or managing them with proper secresy and advantage, have lost for ever, what they might have certainly secured with honesty and plain-dealing.-The general causes of the disappointments in their business, or of the unhappiness in their lives, lying but too manifestly in their own disorderly passions, which, by attempting to carry them a shorter way to riches and honour, disappoint them of both for ever, and make plain their ruin is from themselves, and that they eat the fruits which their own hands have watered and ripened.-Sterne.

CCCVII.

I think, I never knew an instance of great quickness of parts being joined with great solidity. The most rapid rivers are seldom or never deep.-Shenstone.

CCCVIII.

Po

There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. verty treads upon the heels of great and unexpected riches.-Bruyere.

CCCIX.

Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.-Theophrastus.

CCCX.

Before dinner, men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk: when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects. -Johnson.

CCCXI.

Custom is a violent and treacherous school-mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in

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