Page images
PDF
EPUB

the wrong; which is but faying, in other words, that he is wifer to-day than he was yesterday.

H

WHEREVER I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generofity if he were a rich man.

FLOWERS of rhetoric in fermons or ferious difcourfes, are like the blue and red flowers in corn, pleafing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him whe would reap the profit.

IT often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been moft injured by flanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit, which the birds have been picking at.

Тне еуе of the critic is often like a microfcope, made fo very fine and nice, that it discovers the atoms, grains, and minuteft articles, without ever comprehending the whole, comparing the parts, or feeing all at once the harmony.

MEN's zeal for religion is much of the fame kind as that which they fhew for a foot-ball: whenever it is contefted for, every one is ready to venture their lives and limbs in the difpute; but when that is once at an end, it is no more thought on, but fleeps in oblivion, buried in rubbish, which. no one thinks it worth his pains to rake into, much less to

remove..

HONOUR is but a fictitious kind of honefty; a mean but a neceffary substitute for it, in focieties who have none; it is a fort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the fterling cafh of true morality and religion.

PERSONS of great delicacy fhould know the certainty of the following truth: there are abundance of cafes which occafion fufpenfe, in which whatever they determine, they will repent of the determination; and this through a pro

penfity

penfity of human nature to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not pursue.

THE chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones feems owing to fimplicity. Every noble truth and fentiment was expreffed by the former in a natural manner, in a word and phrase fimple, perfpicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ?

CHAP. VIII.

WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble in rea

fon! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how exprefs and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehenfion, how like a god!"

IF to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes? palaces. He is a good divine who follows his own inftructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.

MEN's evil manners live in brafs; their virtues we write in water.

THE web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

THE sense of death is most in apprehenfion;

And the poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporeal fufferance, feels a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

How far the little candle throws his beams!
So fhines a good deed in a naughty world.

Love all, truft a few,

Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than in use; keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for filence
But never task'd for speech.

THE cloud-clapt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The folemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherits, fhall diffolve;
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leave not a wreck behind! we are fuch stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

OUR indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

THE Poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

HEAVEN doth with us, as we with torches do,

Not

Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not.

Spirits are not finely touch'd,,

But to fine iffues: nor nature never lends

The smallest fcruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddefs, the determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

WHAT ftronger breaft-plate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel juft:
And he but naked (tho' lock'd up in steel)
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

CHAP. IX.

OH, world, thy flippery turns Friends now faft fworn

Whose double bofoms feem to wear one heart,

Whose hours, whofe bed, whofe meal, and exercise
Are ftill together; who twine (as 'twere) in love
Infeparable; fhall within this hour,.

On a diffention of a doit, break out

To bittereft enmity. So felleft foes,

Whose paffions and whose plots have broke their sleep,

To take the one the other, by fome chance,

Some trick not worth an egg, fhall grow
And interjoin their iffues.

So it falls out,

dear friends,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and loft,
Why then we wreak the value; then we find

The

The virtue that poffeffion would not shew us

Whilft it was ours.

COWARDS die many times before their deaths; The valiant never tafte of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me moft ftrange that men fhould fear :·
Seeing that death, a neceffary end,.

Will come, when it will come.

THERE is fome foul of goodness in things evil,
Would men obfervingly distil it out,

For our bad neighbour makes us early ftirrers:
Which is both healthful, and good husbandry;
Befides, they are our outward confciences,
And preachers to us all; admonishing,
That we should dress us fairly for our end.

O MOMENTARY grace of mortal men,

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!'
Who builds his hope in th' air of men's fair looks,
Lives like a drunken failor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down

Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

WHо fhall go about

To cozen fortune, and be honourable

Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.

O that estates, degrees, and offices,

Were not derived corruptly, that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

How

« PreviousContinue »