talents sacrificed to his convivial ones; if he does not reserve all his exertions for his art, nature must sink under double duty, and the most that he can obtain in return will be pity.-Cumberland.

CCCCLXXVII.

In malice to proud wits, some proudly lull
Their peevish reason, vain of being dull;
When some home joke has stung their solemn souls,
In vengeance they determine-to be fools;

Thro' spleen, that little nature gave, make less,
Quite zealous in the ways of heaviness;
To lumps inanimate a fondness take,
And disinherit sons that are awake.

These, when their utmost venom they would spit,
Most barbarously tell you-" he's a wit."
Poor negroes, thus to show their burning spite,
To Cacodæmons, say, they're dev'lish white.

CCCCLXXVIII.

Young.

The utmost that can be achieved, or I think pretended, by any rules in the art of poetry, is but to hinder some men from being very ill poets, but not to make any man a very good one.-Sir W. Temple.

CCCCLXXIX.

An extemporaneous poet is to be judged as we judge a race horse; not by the gracefulness of his motion, but the time he takes to finish his course. The best critic on earth may err in determining his precise degree of merit, if he have neither a stop-watch in his hand, nor a clock within nis hearing. Shenstone.

CCCCLXXX.

Some men relate what they think, as what they know ; some men of confused memories, and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.-Johnson. '

CCCCLXXXI.

Man is the merriest species of the creation, all above and below him are serious. He sees things in a different light from other beings, and finds his mirth arising from objects that perhaps cause something like pity or displeasure in higher natures. Laughter is indeed a very good counterpoise to the spleen; and it seems but reasonable that we should be capable of receiving joy from what is no real good to us, since we can receive grief from what is no real evil.—Addison.

CCCCLXXXII

How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,

When none can sin against the people's will;
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!

Love seizes on us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favours the surprise ;' one look, one glance from the fair, fixes and determines us. Friendship, on the contrary, is a long time in forming, it is of slow growth, through many trials and months of familiarity. How much wit, good nature, indulgencies, how many good offices and civilities are required among friends to accomplish in some years, what a lovely face, or a fine hand does in a minute?—Bruyere.

CCCCLXXXIV.

All human race would fain be wits,
And millions miss for one that hits:
Young's universal passion, pride,
Was never known to spread so wide.
Say Britain! could you ever boast
Three poets in an age at most?
Our chilling climate hardly bears
A sprig of bays in fifty years,
While every fool his claim alleges,
As if it grew in common hedges.

Swift.

CCCCLXXXV.

It would not be amiss, if an old bachelor, who lives in contempt of matrimony, were obliged to give a portion to an old maid who is willing to enter into it.-Tatler

CCCCLXXXVI.

Let wits, like spiders, from the tortur'd brain
Fine-draw the critic web with curious pain;
The gods-a kindness I with thanks must pay,
Have formed me of a coarser kind of clay;
Nor stung with envy, nor with spleen diseas'd,
A poor dull creature still with nature pleas'd:
Hence to thy praises, Garrick, I agree,

And pleas'd with nature must be pleas'd with thee.

Churchill's Rosciad.

CCCCLXXXVII.

If words be a lie without reservation, they are so with it for this does not alter the words themselves; nor the meaning of the words; nor the purpose of him who delivers them.-Bishop Taylor.

CCCCLXXXVIII.

How hard soe'er it be to bridle wit,
Yet memory oft no less requires the bit.
How many hurried by its force away,
For ever in the land of gossips stray !
Usurp the province of the nurse to lull,
Without her privilege of being dull!
Tales upon tales they raise ten stories high,
Without regard to use or symmetry.

CCCCLXXXIX.

Stilling feet

All the virtues that have been ever in mankind are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. The utmost a poor poet can do, is to get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues, and deal them with his utmost liberality to his hero or his patron: he may ring the changes as far

as it will go, and vary his phrases till he has talked round; but the reader quickly finds it is all pork with a little variety of sauce: for there is no inventing terms of art beyond our ideas; and when ideas are exhausted, terms of art must be so too.-Swift.

CCCCXC.

The nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow but he who remains totally silent for want of leisure to prepare himself to speak well, and he also whom leisure does no ways benefit to better speaking, are equally unhappy.-Montaigne.

CCCCXCI.

Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats; the first always imposes on itself, the second frequently deceives others too.-Zimmerman.

CCCCXCII.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.

-Burke.

CCCCXCIII.

What if a man delight to pass his time
In spinning reason into harmless rhyme,
Or sometimes boldly venture to the play?-

Say, where's the crime-great man of prudence, say,
No two on earth in all things can agree;

All have some darling singularity:

Women and men, as well as girls and boys,
In gewgaws take delight, and sigh for toys.

Your sceptres and your crowns, and such like things,
Are but a better kind of toys for kings.

In things indiff'rent, reason bids us choose,
Whether the whim's a monkey, or a muse.

CCCCXCIV..

Churchill.

There are a set of malicious, prating, prudent gossips, both male and female, who murder characters to kill time; and will rob a young fellow of his good name before he has years to know the value of it.-Sheridan.

CCCCXCV.

From the bear-garden of the pedagogue, a raw unprincipled boy is turned loose upon the world to travel, without any ideas but those of improving his dress at Paris, or starting into taste by gazing on some paintings at Rome. Ask him of the manners of the people, and he will tell you that the skirt is worn much shorter in France, and that every body eats macaroni in Italy. When he returns home, he buys a seat in parliament, and studies the constitution.-Mackenzie.

CCCCXCVI.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should be, with wealth and honour bless'd,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd two-legged thing, a son.

CCCCXCVII.

Dryden.

The world is so full of ill-nature, that I have lampoons sent me by people who cannot spell, and satires composed by those who scarce know how to write.-Spectator.

CCCCXCVIII.

He that is respectless in his courses,
Oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
Ben Jonson.