lively consciousness that gives grace to great sentiments. The jest is to be a thing unexpected; therefore your undesigning manner is a beauty in expressions of mirth; and when you are to talk on a set subject, the more you are moved yourself, the more you will move others.-Swift.

CCXXXIV.

Common understandings, like cits in gardening, allow no shades to their picture.—Shenstone.

CCXXXV.

There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a weed, which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.--Addison.

CCXXXVI.

If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take the contrary to what the liar says for certain truth; but the reverse of truth hath a hundred figures, and a field indefinite without bound or limit.-Montaigne.

CCXXXVII.

There is what is called the high-way to posts and honours, and there is a cross and by-way, which is much the shortest.-Bruyere.

CCXXXVIII.

How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw

a full face, and make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing.

*

A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of her servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging: but to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband.-Dryden.

CCXXXIX.

Conversation is a traffic; and if you enter into it without some stock of knowledge, to balance the account perpetually betwixt you—the trade drops at once, and this is the reason, however it may be boasted to the contrary, why travellers have so little (especially good) conversation with natives-owing to their suspicion, or perhaps conviction, that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation of young itinerants worth the trouble of their bad language, or the interruption of their visits.-Sterne.

CCXL.

All the while you live, you purloin from life, and live at the expense of life itself; the perpetual work of our whole life is but to lay the foundation of death; you are in death whilst you live, because you still are after death when you are no more alive. Or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying more rudely than the dead. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it, and go your way satisfied. If you have not known how to make the best use of it, and if it was unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it; to what end would you desire to keep it? Life in itself is neither good nor evil, but is the scene of good or evil, as you make it; and if you have lived a day, you have seen all. Come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety of all the acts of the comedy is performed in a year. If you have seen the revolution of the four seasons, they comprehend the infancy, youth, virility, and old age, of the world. The year has played his part, and knows no other way, has no new farce, but must begin and repeat the

same again; it will always be the same thing.-Montaigne.

-CCXLI.

If by the liberty of the press, we understand merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please; but, if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating, and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it whenever our legislators shall please to alter the law; and shall cheerfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others, for the privilege of not being abused myself.—Franklin.

CCXLII.

Superfluity creates necessity; and necessity superfluity. Take care to be an economist in prosperity: there is no fear of your being one in adversity.-Zimmerman.

CCXLIII.

Plutarch, discoursing of the effects of the air on the minds of men, observes, that the inhabitants of the Piræum possessed very different tempers from those of the higher town in Athens, which was distant about four miles from the former: but I believe no one attributes the difference of manners in Wapping and St. James's to a difference of air or climate.--Hume

CCXLIV.

A critic who sits up to read only for an occasion of censure and reproof, is a creature as barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to hang all men that come before him upon a trial.-Swift.

CCXLV.

Ceremony keeps up things: 'tis like a penny glass to a rich spirit, or some excellent water; without it the water were spilt, and the spirit lost.—Selden.

Every thing may be

lity and love united.

CCXLVI.

mimicked by hypocrisy, but humiThe humblest star twinkles most in the darkest night. The more rare humility and love united, the more radiant when they meet.-Lavater.

CCXLVII.

Of all the enemies of idleness, want is the most formidable. Fame is soon found to be a sound, and love a dream. Avarice and ambition may be justly suspected of being privy confederacies with idleness; for when they have, for a while, protected their votaries, they often deliver them up, to end their lives under her dominion. Want always struggles against idleness; but want herself is often overcome, and every hour shows the careful observer those who had rather live in ease than in plenty. -Johnson.

CCXLVIII.

Even Joe Miller, in his jests, has an eye to poetical justice; he generally gives the victory, or turns the laugh, on the side of merit. No small compliment to mankind!-Shenstone.

CCXLIX.

The weather is not a safe topic of discourse; your company may be hippish: nor is health; your associate may be a malade imaginaire: nor is money; you may be suspected as a borrower.-Zimmerman.

CCL.

Drunkenness is a social festive vice. The drinker collects his circle; the circle naturally spreads; of those who are drawn within it, many become the corrupters and centres of sets and circles of their own; every one countenancing, and perhaps emulating the rest, till a whole neighbourhood be infected from the contagion of a single example.-Paley.

CCLI.

There is nothing of which men are so fond of, and withal so careless, as life.-Bruyere.

CCLII.

To relate all the ill that is true of the best man in the world, would probably render him the object of suspicion and distrust; and if this practice were universal, mutual confidence and esteem, the comforts of society, and the endearments of friendship, would be at an end.—Adven

turer.

CCLIII.

Egotism is the coquetry of a modern author; whose epistles, dedicatory prefaces, and addresses to the reader, are so many affected graces, designed to draw the attention from the subject, towards himself; and make it be generally observed not so much what he says, as what he appears, or is, and what figure he already makes, or hopes to make, in the fashionable world.-Shaftesbury.

CCLIV.

A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious; for to know much of other men's matters cannot be, because all that ado may concern his own estate; therefore it must needs be that he taketh a kind of playpleasure in looking upon the fortunes of others; neither can he that mindeth but his own business find much matter for envy; for envy is a gadding passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep at home: "Non est curiosus idem sit malevolus."-Lord Bacon.

CCLV.

An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave, as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancour agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth, or distinctions. Chance presides over the circle, and supremely decides on all occasions; they all watch its motions by a