that of such common critics, who can at best pretend but to value themselves by discovering the defaults of other men, rather than any worth or merit of their own: a sort of levellers, that will needs equal the best or richest of the country, not by improving their own estates, but reducing those of their neighbours, and making them appear as mean and wretched as themselves. The truth is, there has been so much written of this kind of stuff, that the world is surfeited with the same things over and over, or old common notions new dressed, and, perhaps, embroidered.-Sir W. Temple.

CCCLV.

Rightly to be great,

Is, not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When houour 's at the stake.

CCCLVI.

Shakspeare.

The heroical virtue is friendship, pretended to by all, but understood or practised by very few, which needs no other manifestation, than that the choleric person thinks it an obligation upon his friend to assist him in a murder; the unthrifty and licentious person expects that friendship should oblige him who pretends to love him to waste all his estate in riots and excesses, by becoming bound for him, and so liable to pay those debts which his pride and vanity contract. In a word, there is nothing that the most unreasonable faction, or the most unlawful combination and conspiracy, can be applied to compass, which is not thought by those who should govern the world to be the proper and necessary office of friendship; and that the laws of friendship are extremely violated and broken, if it doth not engage in the performance of all those offices how unjust and unworthy soever.-Clarendon.

CCCLIX.

My mortal injuries have turn'd my mind,
And I could hate myself for being kind,

If there be any majesty above,

That has revenge in store for perjur'd love;
Send, heav'n, the swiftest ruin on his head,
Strike the destroyer, lay the victor dead;
Kill the triumpher, and avenge my wrong,
In height of pomp, when he is warm'd and young,
Bolted with thunder, let him rush along:
And when in the last pangs of life he lies,
Grant I may stand to dart him with my eyes;
Nay, after death,

Pursue his spotted soul, and shoot him as he flies.
Lee's Alexander.

CCCLVIII.

For my own part who have conversed much with men of other nations, and such as have been both in great employments and esteem, I can say very impar tially, that I have not observed, among any, so much true genius as among the English; no where more sharpness of wit, more pleasantness of humour, more range of fancy, more penetration of thought, or depth of reflection among the better sort; no where more goodness of nature and of meaning, nor more plainness of sense and of life, than among the common sort of country people; nor more blunt courage and honesty than among our seamen. But, with all this, our country must be confessed to be, what a great foreign physician called it, the region of spleen; which may arise a good deal from the great uncertainty and many sudden changes of our weather in all seasons of the year: and how much these effect the heads and hearts, especially of the finest tempers, is hard to be believed by men whose thoughts are not turned to such speculations. Sir W. Temple.

CCCLIX.

The writer who never deviates, who never hazards a new thought, or a new expression, though his friends may compliment him upon his sagacity, though criticism lifts her feeble voice in his praise, will seldom arrive at any degree of perfection. The way to acquire

lasting esteem, is not by the fewness of a writer's faults but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.-Goldsmith.

CCCLX.

Why should the poor be flattered?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp;
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,

She hath sealed thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing;

A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards

Has ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those,
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's fingers
To sound what stop they please.

Hamlet to Horatio-Shakspeare..

CCCLXI.

Despots govern by terror. They know, that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.-Bure-on the French Revolution.

CCCLXII.

Who painted justice blind, did not declare
What magistrates should be, but what they are:
Not so much 'cause they rich and poor should weigh
In their just scales alike; but because they

Now blind with bribes, are grown so weak of sight,
They'll sooner feel a cause, than see it right.
Heath's Clarastella.

CCCLXIII.

The last maim given to learning, has been by the scorn of pedantry, which the shallow, the superficial, and the sufficient among scholars first drew upon them

selves, and very justly, by pretending to more than they had, or to more esteem than what they could deserve; by broaching it in all places, at all times, upon all occasions, and by living so much among themselves, or in their closets and cells, as to make them unfit for all other business, and ridiculous in all other conversations.-Sir W. Temple.

CCCLXIV.

Unto nobody, my woman saith, she had rather a wife be Than to myself, tho' Jove grew a suitor of hers: These be her words, but a woman's words to a love that is eager,

In wind or water's streams do require to be writ. Sir P. Sidney-from the Latin of Catullus.

CCCLXV.

"Tis plain there is not in nature a point of stability to be found, every thing either ascends or declines: when wars are ended abroad, sedition begins at home; and when men are freed from fighting for necessity, they quarrel through ambition.-Sir W. Raleigh.

CCCLXVI.

(Folly.) On a sofa of goose-feathers made,
Lo! half-supine, luxurious Folly laid:
Pow'rful to lull the most enliven'd sense,
This sofa was the gift of indolence:
Her little left eye twinkles to the light,
But open'd wide and goggling is her right
Down from her collar to her bosom bare,
Her bells hung pendant like a solitaire:
High o'er her ear, light-waving to the gale,
She wore the plumage of a peacock's tail,
Which nodding o'er her round unmeaning face,
Gave to her front the French, fantastic grace.
Full fat and fair she waddles in her gait,
And lisps so pretty that she loves to prate:
Her ears she pricks up to herself to list,
And sputters all her meaning in a mist.

Wise in conceit she seems, for all the while
Her face is dimpled with a foolish smile.
A painted fan her fickleness declares,
Which waving gives the ideot goddess airs;
She flirts it to a sceptre of command,

And grasps an English Plautus in her hand.-
As round their queen the drones at evening creep,
And with mixt murmur lull the hive to sleep:
So these the dame environ round and round,
And every booby sends a hollow sound.
So strong the savoury scent of supper draws,
They clamour universally applause.

And lo! ten waiters drest like modern beaux
In Folly's liv'ry parti-colour'd clothes,
Prompt at her whistle, a large table spread,
Produce vast voiders, and a load of bread;
Three buts of beer which Parsons had supply'd,
They brought in well-tann'd jacks of good cow-hide:
Then smoak'd the solid supper on the board,
Such as Van Hogan Mogan might afford;
Beneath a cover first came store of fish,
A jowl of codd, chubbs, gudgeons in a dish;
Wit-damping puddings, tripe in butter fry'd,
Fat chitterling and goose on every side:
Stern at the bottom grinn'd, still breathing dread,
The bristly horrors of a huge hog's head.

CCCLXVII.

Fawkes.

Some falls are the means the happier to rise.

CCCLXVIII.

Shakspeare.

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.-Burke.

CCCLXIX.

That men should kill one another for want of somewhat else to do (which is the case of all volunteers in war,) seems to be so horrible to humanity, that there needs no divinity to control it.-Clarendon.