All these, in fine, may not compare, experience so doth

prove,

Unto the torments, sharp and strange, of such as be in W. Hunnis.

love.

DXXXI.

I do by no means advise you to throw away your time, in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times. Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.-Chesterfield's Letters.

DXXXII.

The tailor and the painter often contribute to the success of a tragedy more than a poet. Scenes effect ordinary minds as much as speeches; and our actors are very sensible, that a well-dressed play has sometimes brought them as full audiences as a well-written one. The Italians have a very good phrase to express this art of imposing upon the spectators by appearances; they call it the "Fourberia della scena," "The knavery, or trickish part of the drama."-Addison.

DXXXIII.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within its bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

DXXXIV.

Shakspeare.

When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry. Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.-Johnson.

DXXXV.

I remember when I was a little boy, (says Swift, in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke,) I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the disappointment vexes me to this very day, and, I believe, it was the type of all my future disappointments.

This little incident, perhaps, gave the first wrong bias to a mind, predisposed to such impressions: and by operating with so much strength and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation of the Dean's subsequent peevishness, passion, misanthropy, and final insanity. The quickness of his sensibility furnished a sting to the slightest disappointment; and pride festered those wounds which self-government would instantly have healed. As children couple hobgoblins with darkness, every contradiction of his humour, every obstacle to his preferment, was, by him, associated with ideas of malignity and evil. By degrees, he acquired a contempt of human nature, and a hatred of mankind, which at last terminated in the total abolition of his rational faculties.-Percival.

DXXXVI.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimnies, than to keep one in fuel.Franklin.

DXXXVII.

The fate of all extremes is such,
Men may be read, as well as books, too much.
To observations, which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake,
To written wisdom, as another's, less:

Maxims are drawn from notions, these from guess.

There's some peculiar in each leaf and grain,
Some unmark'd fibre, or some varying vein;
Shall only man be taken in the gross?
Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss.
That each from other differs, first confess;
Next that he varies from himself no less;
Add nature's, custom's, reason's, passion's, strife,
And all opinion's colours cast on life.

DXXXVIII.

Pope.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.-Johnson.

DXXXIX.

He who will take up another's time and fortune in his service, though he has no prospect of rewarding his merit towards him, is as unjust in his dealings as he who takes up goods of a tradesman without intention or ability to pay him.-Steele.

DXL.

The true gentleman is extracted from ancient and worshipfull parentage. When a pepin is planted on a pepin stock, the fruit growing thence is called a renate, a most delicious apple, as both by sire and damme well descended. Thus his blood must needs be well purified who is gentilely born on both sides.-Fuller.

DXLI.

It is a fine stroke of Cervantes, when Sancho, sick of his government, makes no answer to his comforters, but aims directly at his shoes and stockings. --Shenstone.

DXLII.

There is something of oddity in the very idea of greatness, for we are seldom astonished at a thing very much resembling ourselves.-Goldsmith.

DXLIII.

Scoffs, calumnies, and jests, are frequently the causes of melancholy. It is said that "a blow with a word, strikes deeper than a blow with a sword;" and certainly there are many men whose feelings are more galled by a calumny, a bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, a squib, a satire, or an epigram, than by any misfortune whatsoever. -Burton.

DXLIV.

It may be remarked, for the comfort of honest poverty, that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow in a barren soil.-Hughes.

DXLV.

One may observe that women in all ages have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads; and indeed I very much admire, that those female architects, who built such wonderful structures out of ribands, lace, and wire, have not been recorded for their respective inventions. It is certain there have been as many orders in these kinds of building, as in those which have been made of marble. Sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple.-Addison.

DXLVI.

Poets make characters, as salesmen clothes;
We take no measure of your fops and beaux;
But here all sizes and all shapes we meet,
And fit yourselves-like chaps in Monmouth-street.
Prologue to Three Hours after Marriage-Pope.

DXLVII.

As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious, so also is it an obvious, a cheap, and an easy virtue: so obvious,

1

that wherever there is life there is place for it: so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense: and so easy, that the sluggard may be so likewise without labour.-Seneca.

DXLVIII.

Melibœus. Shepherd, what's love? I pray thee tell.
Faustus. It is that fountain and that well

Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, that sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell-
And this is love as I heard tell.

Mel. Yet, what is love? I prithee say.
Faust. It is a work on holiday;
It is December match'd with May,
When lusty blood's in fresh array,
And this is love, as I hear say.

Mel. Yet, what is love? good shepherd, sain.
Faust. It is a sunshine mixt with rain;

It is a tooth-ache, or like pain;
It is a game where none doth gain;
The lass saith so, and would full fain,
And this is love, as I hear sain.

Mel. Yet, shepherd, what is love, I pray?
Faust. It is a yea, it is a nay,
A pretty kind of sporting fray,
It is a thing will soon away:
Then nymphs take 'vantage while you may,
And this is love, as I hear say.

Mel. And what is love, good shepherd, show?
Faust. A thing that creeps, it cannot go;

A prize that passes to and fro;
A thing for one, a thing for moe;
And he that proves shall find it so;

And, shepherd, this is love, I trow.

DXLIX.

Sir Walter Raleigh.

Provision is the foundation of hospitality; and thrift

the fuel of magnificence. Sir P. Sidney.