complies with the turns, and avoids the obstructions. But the traveller in the dusk fears more as he sees less; he knows there may be danger, and therefore suspects that he is never safe, tries every step before he fixes his foot, and shrinks at every noise, lest violence should approach him. Cunning discovers little at a time, and has no other means of certainty than multiplication of stratagems, and superfluity of suspicion. Yet men thus narrow by nature, and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity; and, by watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong properly to higher characters. Idler, vol. 2.

Courage.

Personal courage is the quality of highest esteem among a warlike and uncivilized people; and with the ostentatious display of courage are closely connected promptitude of offence and quickness of resentment.

Western Islands.

We may as easily make wrong estimates of our own courage as our own humility, by mistaking a sudden effervescence of imagination for settled resolution.

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Life of Sir T. Browne.

Companion.

There is no man more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; for neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they frequently see the best minds corrupted by them.

Notes upon Shakspeare, vol. 5.

There are times in which the wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise, without the labour of deserving it, in which the most elevated mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be at rest. All, therefore, are, at some hour or another, fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relieve them from solitude, without condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear; and he that encourages us to please ourselves will not be long without preference, in our affection, to those whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us without importance, and without regard. Rambler, vol. 2.

He that amuses himself among well-cho

sen companions can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merriment which virtue can allow, some useful hints; nor can converse on the most familiar topics, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thoughtless wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.

This is the time in which those friendships that give happiness or consolation, relief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable, as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries, may compel veneration and respect; but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and cheerfulness which disencumbers all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom, and exalts the timorous to confidence Rambler, vol. 2

Copies compared with Originals. Copies are known from originals even when the painter copies his own picture; so, if an author should literally translate his, he would lose the manner of an original.

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But, though copies are easily known, good imitations are not detected with equal certainty, and are by the best judges often mistaken. Nor is it true that the writer has always peculiarities equally distinguishable with those of the painter. The peculiar manner of each arises from the desire, natural to every performer, of facilitating his subsequent works by recurrence to his former ideas; this recurrence produces that repetition which is called habit. The painter, whose work is partly intellectual and partly manual, has habits of the mind, the eye, and the hand: the writer has only habits of the mind. Yet some painters have differed as much from themselves as from any other; and it is said there is little resemblance between the first works of Raphael and the last.

The same variation may be expected in writers, and if it be true, as it seems, that they are less subject to habit, the difference between their works may be yet greater. Notes upon Shakspeare, vol. 1.

Comparison.

Very little of the pain or pleasure which does not begin and end in ourselves, is otherwise than relative. We are rich or

poor, great or little, in proportion to the number that excel us, or fall beneath us, in any of these respects; and therefore a man whose uneasiness arises from reflection on any misfortune that throws him below those with whom he was once equal, is comforted by finding that he is not yet lowest. Again, when we look abroad, and behold the multitudes that are groaning under evils heavier than those which we have experienced, we shrink back to our own state, and, instead of repining that so much must be felt, learn to rejoice that we have not more to feel.

By this observation of the miseries of thers, fortitude is strengthened, and the mind brought to a more extensive knowledge of her own powers. Rambler, vol. 1.

City.

There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities, that one part of the inhabitants lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others; and inquiry is laboriously exerted, to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away. Idler, vol. 2.