CCLXXXVIII. Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase, CCLXXXIX. Young. Every one must see and feel, that bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions; and that if the latter only are forbidden, and the former left free, all morality will soon be at an end.-Porteus. CCXC. Try a good poem as you would sound a pipkin; and if it rings well upon the knuckle, be sure there is no flaw in it. Verse without rhyme is a body without soul, (for "the chief lie consisteth in the rhyme,") or a bell without a clapper; which, in strictness, is no bell, as being neither of use nor delight.—Swift. CCXCI. As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and fills up the chasms of thought with ideas of what is past, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the passions of hope and fear.-Spectator. CCXCII. -They who write, because all write, have still Th' excuse for writing, and for writing ill, But he is worst, who beggarly doth chaw Other wits' fruit. CCXCIII. Donne. It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and heaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, nothing in their mouths.-Sallust. CCXCIV. Little that is truly noble can be expected from one who is ever poring on his cash-book, or balancing his accounts. -Spectator. CCXCV. Ah how Sophia, can you leave me CCXCVI. Calcott. "Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle," says the poet or at best the keepers of cattle for other men; they have nothing which is properly their own; that is a sufficient mortification for me, while I am translating Virgil. -Dryden. CCXCVII. Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly on to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight.-Johnson. CCXCVIII. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. CCXCIX. Shakspeare. To correct the particular faults of private men, would be a work too infinite; yet some there be of that nature, that though they be in private men, yet their evil reacheth to a general hurt, as the extortion of sheriffs, and their subsheriffs and bailiffs, the corruption of victuallers, &c.— Spenser. CCC. Our studies will be for ever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travellers we must take what we can get, and when we can get it.—Sir J. Reynolds. CCCI. Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend; but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves.-Spectator. CCCII. There is nothing in itself valuable or despicable, de sirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but these attri butes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.-Hume. CCCIII. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.—Addison. CCCIV. Look on this globe of earth, and you will find it to be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is that which some call land, but a fine coat faced with green? or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vege table beaux. Observe how sparkish a peruke adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trimmings.-Swift. CCCV. Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters: some are mere letters, some contain entire words, lines, whole pages, which at once decipher the life of a man. One such genuine uninterrupted page may be your key to all the rest; but first be certain that he wrote it all alone, and without thinking of publisher or reader.-Lavater. CCCVI. The paths of virtue are plain and straight, so that the blind, persons of the meanest capacity, shall not err.Dishonesty requires skill to conduct it, and as great art to conceal-what 'tis every one's interest to detect. And I think I need not remind you how oft it happens in at tempts of this kind-where worldly men, in haste to be rich, have overrun the only means to it,-and for want of laying their contrivances with proper cunning, or managing them with proper secresy and advantage, have lost for ever, what they might have certainly secured with honesty and plain-dealing. The general causes of the disappointments in their business, or of the unhappiness in their lives, lying but too manifestly in their own disorderly passions, which, by attempting to carry them a shorter way to riches and honour, disappoint them of both for ever, and make plain their ruin is from themselves, and that they eat the fruits which their own hands have watered and ripened.-Sterne. CCCVII. I think, I never knew an instance of great quickness of parts being joined with great solidity. The most rapid rivers are seldom or never deep.-Shenstone. CCCVIII. There is nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads upon the heels of great and unexpected riches.— Bruyere. CCCIX. Nothing is more precious than time, and those who misspend it are the greatest of all prodigals.-Theophrastus CCCX. Before dinner, men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk: when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects. Johnson. CCCXI. Custom is a violent and treacherous school-mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.—Montaigne CCCXII. True courage has so little to do with anger that there lies always the strongest suspicion against it, where this passion is highest. The true courage is cool and calm. The bravest of men have the least of a brutal bullying insolence; and in the very time of danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in fury or anger can never be placed to the account of courage. Were it otherwise, womankind might claim to be the stoutest sex; for their hatred and anger have ever been allowed the strongest and most lasting.— Shaftesbury. CCCXIII. The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate. Those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimen sions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels, in privacy, to be useless encumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition; the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. It is indeed at home that every man must be known, by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue, or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fictitious Denevolence.-Johnson. CCCXIV. Love is a fire that burns and sparkles, |