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BRITISH

IBRARY

Laconics.

Huge volumes, like the ox roasted at Bartholomew Fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what is delicate, savory, and well concocted, than smaller pieces. F. Osborn.

I.

WEIGH not so much what men say, as what they prove; remembering that truth is simple and naked, and needs not invective to apparel her comeliness.— Sidney.

II.

Scholars are men of peace; they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius' razor, their pens carry further, and give a louder report than thunder I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisk, than in the fury of a merciless pen.- Sir T. Brown.

III.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity.

IV.

Pope.

There is something in the genius of poetry too libertine to be confined to many rules; and whoever goes about to subject it to such constraints, loses both its

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spirit and grace, which are ever native, and never learned, even of the best masters: it is as if, to make excellent honey, you should cut off the wings of your bees, confine them to their hive, or their stands, and lay flowers before them, such as you think the sweetest, and likely to yield the finest extraction: you had as good pull out their stings, and make arrant drones of them.-Sir W. Temple.

V.

Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms ; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. — Burke.

VI.

Fame, if not double fac'd, is double mouth'd,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds:
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight,
Samson Agonistes.

VII.

Learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book; since in nature we know that it is well to do well, and what is good, and what is evil, although not in the words of art, which philosophers bestow on us; for out of natural conceit (which is the very hand-writing of God), the philosophers drew it. But to be moved to do that which we know; or to be moved with desire to know,-hoc opus, hic labor est.— Sidney.

VIII.

Wit is brush-wood, judgment timber the one gives the greatest flame, the other yields the durablest heat;

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