ECONOMY is no difgrace; it is better living on a little, than out-living a great deal. NEXT to the fatisfaction I receive in the prosperity of an honeft man, I am best pleased with the confufion of a rascal. WHAT is often termed fhynefs, is nothing more than refined fenfe, and an indifference to common obfervations. THE higher character a perfon fupports, the more he should regard his minutest actions. EVERY perfon infenfibly fixes upon fome degree of refinement in his discourse, some measure of thought which he thinks worth exhibiting. It is wife to fix this pretty high, although it occafions one to talk the lefs. To endeavour all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philofophy, is to spend fo much in armour, that one has nothing left to defend. DEFERENCE often fhrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the fenfitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger. MEN are fometimes accused of pride, merely because their accufers would be proud themselves if they were in their places. PEOPLE frequently ufe this expreffion, I am inclined to think fo and fo, not confidering that they are then speaking. the most literal of all truths. MODESTY makes large amends for the pain it gives the perfons who labour under it, by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favour. THE difference there is betwixt honour and honesty seems to be chiefly in the motive. The honeft man does that from duty, which the man of honour does for the fake of character. and we A LIAR begins with making falfhood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falfhood. VIRTUE should be confidered as a part of taste fhould as much avoid deceit, or sinister meanings in discourse as we would puns, bad language, or falfe grammar. CHA P. VII. ; EFERENCE is the moft complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments. He that lies in bed all a fummer's morning, lofes the chief pleasure of the day: he that gives up his youth to indolence, undergoes a lofs of the fame kind. SHINING characters are not always the most agreeable ones. The mild radiance of an emerald, is by no means lefs pleafing than the glare of the ruby. To be at once a rake, and to glory in the character, difcovers at the fame time a bad disposition, and a bad taste. How is it poffible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not fo much as take warning? ALTHOUGH men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps a few know their own ftrergh. It is men as in foils, where fometimes there is a vein of gold which the author knows not of. FINE fenfe and exalted fenfe are not half so valuable as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of fense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a lofs for want of ready change. LEARNING is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in fkilful hands; in unskilful, moft mifchievous. A MAN fhould never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong; which is but saying in other words, that he is wifer to-day than he was yesterday. 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 discourses, are like the blue and red flowers in corn, pleafing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap the profit. IT often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been moft injured by flanders: as we usually find that to be the fweeteft fruit, which the birds have been pecking at. THE eye 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 contested 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 honesty; 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 should 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 though a pro pensity penfity of human nature to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not purfue. THE chief advantage that ancient writers can boaft over modern ones feems owing to fimplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expreffed by the former in a natural manner, in word and phrase fimple, perfpicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ? WE CHA P. VIII. HAT a piece of work is man! how noble in reafon how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express an 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 instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. MEN's evil manners live in brass; 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 fenfe of death is moft in apprehenfion; And the poor beetle that we treed upon, โด In corporal fuffierance feels a pang as great, 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 THE cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, Leave not a wreck behind: we are fuch stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a fleep. OUR indifcretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail ; and that should teach us, 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 fhape, and gives to airy nothing HEAVEN doth with us as we with torches do, Not |