OSTENTATIOUS GENEROSITY.

BUT

UT here comes GENEROSITY;-givingnot to a decayed artift-but to the arts and fciences themselves.- -See!-he builds not a chamber the wall apart for the prophet; but whole fchools and colleges for thofe who come after. Lord! how they will magnify his name! 'tis in capitals already; the first the highest, in the gilded rent-roll of every hofpital and afylum.

-One honest tear fhed in private over the unfor tunate is worth it all.

SERM. XVII. P. 47.

How

WIT AND JUDGMENT.

OW comes it to pafs, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment ?But mark, I fay, reported to be-for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.

I hate fet differtations and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the fillieft things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader's conception-when, in all

likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have feen fomething ftanding, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once- for what hin"drance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable defire of "knowledge bring to any man, even from a fot, a. "pot. a fool, a fool, a winter mittain, a truckle for "a pulley, the lid of a goldsmith's crucible, an oil bot❝tle, an old flipper, or a cane chair ?"I am this inoment fitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illuftrate this affair of wit and judgment by the two knobs on the top of the back of it: are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck flightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to fay in fo clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of fun

beams.

I enter now directly upon the point..

they

Here stands wit-and there ftands judgment, clofe beside it, just like the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this felf-fame chair on which I amfitting.

-You fee, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame as wit and judgment are of ours-and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all fuch cafes of duplicated embellishments—to answer one another.

Now, for the fake of an experiment, and for the clearer illuftrating this matter-let us for a moment :

take off one of these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on—nay, don't laugh at it, but did you ever see, in the whole courfe of your lives, fuch a ridiculous bufinefs as this has made of it?-Why, 'tis as miferable a fight as a fow with one ear; and there is just as much fenfe and fymmetry in the one as in the other: -do-pray, get off your feats only to take a view of it !-Now would any man who valued his character a ftraw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in fuch a condition ?-nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain queftion, Whether this one fingle knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can ferve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?and let me farther afk, in cafe the chair was your own, If you would not in your confciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all?

Now thefe two knobsor top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature -being, as I faid, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful the most priz'd-the most calamitous to be without, and confequently the hardest to come at-for all thefe reafons put together, there is not a mortal among us, fo deftitute of a love of good fame or feeding-or fo ignorant of what will do him good therein-who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or

the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing feems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pafs.

Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one-unless they lay hold of the other,pray, what do you think would become of them?—Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e'en have been contented to have gone with their infides naked:- this was not to be

borne, but by an effort of philofophy not to be fuppofed in the cafe we are upon-so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have fnátched up and fecreted under their cloaks and great periwigs, had they not raifed a bue and cry at the fame time against the lawful owners.

I need not tell your worships, that this was done with fo much cunning and artifice-that the great Locke, who was feldom outwittéd by falfe foundswas nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was fo deep and folemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered fo general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philofopher himself was deceived by it-it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors; but this was not of the number; fo that inftead of fitting down coolly, as fuch a philofopher fhould have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philofophifed upon it on the contrary, he took the fact

for granted, and fo joined in with the cry, and halloo'd it as boisterously as the reft.

This has been the Magna Charta of stupidity ever fince-but your reverences plainly fee, it has been obtained in fuch a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat-which, by the bye, is one of the many and vile impofitions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.

As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoke my mind too freely-I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly faid to their difpraise or prejudice, by one general declarationThat I have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any farther than when I fee they are bespoke and let grow, on purpose to carry on this felf-fame impofture-for any purpofe-peace be with them! mark only

I write not for them.

T. SHANDY, VOL. II. CHAP, 13.

*,།

WE

OPINION.

E are perpetually in fuch engagements and fituations, that 'tis our duties to speak what our opinions are but God forbid that this should ever be done but from its best motive-the fense of what is due to virtue, governed by difcretion, and the utmost fellow-feeling: were we to go on other