DCCXC.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good humour, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.Pope.

DCCXCI.

Dearest heart, and dearer image, stay;
Alas! true joys at best are dreams enough.
Though you stay here, you pass too fast away,
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.
Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.

DCCXCII.

Donne.

Take a fine lady who is of a delicate frame, and you may observe, from the hour she rises, a certain weariness of all that passes about her. I know more than

one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are sick of such strange frightful people that they meet; one is so awkward, and another so disagreeable, that it looks like penance to breathe the same air with them. You see this is so very true, that a great part of ceremony and good-breeding among the ladies turns upon their uneasiness; and I will undertake, if the how-doye-servants of our women were to make a weekly bill of sickness, as the parish clerks do of mortality, you would not find, in an account of seven days, one in thirty that was not downright sick or indisposed, or but a very little better than she was, and so forth.-Steele.

DCCXCIII.

Tavern bills are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth; you come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are paid too much; purse and brain both empty: the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn of heaviness.-O, the charity of a penny cord! it sums up thousands in a trice: you have no true debtor and creditor but it; of what's past, is, and to come, the discharge: Your neck is pen, book, and counters; so the acquittance follows.-Shakspeare.

DCCXCIV.

The way to fame is like the way to heaven-through much tribulation.-Sterne.

DCCXCV.

A London parish is a very comfortless thing; as the clergyman seldom knows the face of one out of ten of his parishioners.-Johnson.

DCCXCVI.

Since, dearest friend, 'tis your desire to see
A true receipt of happiness from me:
These are the chief ingredients, if not all;
Take an estate neither too great or small,
Which quantum sufficit the doctors call.
Let this estate from parent's care descend;
The getting it too much of life does spend.
Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be
A fair encouragement for industry.

Let constant fires the winter's fury tame;
And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame.
Thee to the town let never suit at law,
And rarely, very rarely, business, draw.
The active mind in equal temper keep,
In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep.
Let exercise a vigorous health maintain,
Without which all the composition's vain.
In the same weight prudence and innocence take;
And of each dose the just mixture make.
But a few friendships wear, and let them be
By nature and by fortune fit for thee.
Instead of art and luxury in food,

Let mirth and freedom make thy table good.
If any cares into thy day-time creep,

At night, without wine's opium, let them sleep.
Let rest, which nature does to darkness wed,
And not lust, recommend to thee thy bed.
Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art,
Act cheerfully and well the allotted part;
Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past,
And neither fear, nor wish, the approaches of the last,

R 2

Martial

DCCXCVII.

There is nothing that has more startled our English audience, than the Italian recitativo at its first entrance upon the stage. People were wonderfully surprised to hear generals singing the word of command, and ladies delivering messages in music. Our countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a lover chanting out a billet-doux, and even the superscription of a letter set to a tune. The famous blunder in an old play of "Enter a king and two fiddlers solus," was now no longer an absurdity; when it was impossible for a hero in a desert, or a princess in her closet, to speak any thing unaccompanied with musical instruments.-Addison.

DCCXCVIII.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is,
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius, and the mortal instruments,
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

DCCXCIX.

Shakspeare.

Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites. Johnson.

DCCC.

The wisdom of this world is idiotism;

Strength a weak reed; health sickness' enemy,
(And it at length will have the victory;)
Beauty is but a painting; and long life
Is a long journey in December gone,
Tedious and full of tribulation.

DCCCI.

Dekker.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed, that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of

ourselves: but the self-love of some men, inclines them to please others; and the self-love of others, is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.-Swift.

DCCCII.

Friendship's an abstract of love's noble flame,
'Tis love refin'd, and purg'd from all its dross,
The next to angel's love, if not the same,
As strong in passion is, though not so gross:
It antedates a glad eternity,

And is a heaven in epitome.

DCCCIII.

Catherine Phillips.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

DCCCIV.

Shakspeare.

Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing: it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house sometime before it fall: it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him: it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour. But that which is specially to be noted is, that those which (as Cicero says of Pompey) are, 'sui amante, sine rivali," are many times unfortunate; and whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned. Lord Bacon.

DCCCV.

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself.-Franklin.

DCCCVI.

Whoever has flattered his friend successfully, must at once think himself a knave, and his friend a fool.Pope.

DCCCVIL

Diogenes, being asked who were the noblest men in the world, replied, those who despise riches, glory, pleasures, and lastly life; who overcome the contrary of all those things, viz, poverty, infamy, pain, and death, bearing them with an undaunted mind. And Socrates, being asked, what true nobility was, answered, temperance of mind and body.-From the Italian.

DCCCVIII.

Volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized above their intrinsic value, and kept with care; the latter seldom pass for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics, and clipping compilers.-Goldsmith.

DCCCIX.

A scholar, newly enter'd marriage life,
Following his study, did offend his wife,
Because, when she his company expected,
By bookish business she was still neglected;
Coming unto his study, "Lord," quoth she,
"Can papers cause you love them more than me?
I would I were transform'd into a book,
That your affections might upon me look!
But in my wish withall be it decreed

I would be such a book you love to read.

Husband," quoth she, "which book's form should I take

"Marry," said he, "'t were best an almanack: The reason wherefore I do wish thee so,

Is, every year we have a new, you know."

Rowland.