MCXLVII.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.-Addison.

MCXLVIII.

In a true piece of wit all things must be,
Yet all things there agree:

As in the ark joined without force or strife,
All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life:
Or, as the primitive forms of all,

If we compare great things with small,
Which without discord or confusion lie
In that strange mirror of the Deity.

MCXLIX.

Cowley.

By all that's good (and you, Madame, are a great part of my oath,) your incomparable letter hath put me so far besides myselfe, that I have scarce patience to write prose, and my pen is stealing into verse every time I kisse your letter. I am sure, the poore paper smarts for my idolatry, which, by wearing it continually neere my brest, will, at last, be burnt and martyred in those flames of adoration which it hath kindled in me. * You are pleased, Madame, to force me to write, by sending me materialls, and compell me to my greatest happinesse. Yet, though I highly value your magnificente presente, pardon mee, if I must tell the world, they are imperfect emblems of your beauty; for the white and redde of waxe and paper are but shaddowes of that vermillion and snow in your lips and forehead; and the silver of the inkehorne, if it presume to vye whitenesse with your skinne, must confesse itselfe blacker than the liquor it containes.-Dryden's Letter to a Lady.

MCL.

No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

MCLI.

Shakspeare.

Many come to a play so overcharged with criticism, that they very often let fly their censure, when, through their rashness, they have mistaken their aim.-Congreve.

MCLII.

All places that the eye of heaven visits,

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the king did banish thee;
But thou the king. wo doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say-I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not-the king exiled thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com❜st:
Suppose the singing birds, musicians;

The grass on which thou tread'st, the presence strew'd;
The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps no more

Than a delightful measure, or a dance:

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.

King Richard II. Bolingbroke-Shakspeare.

MCLIII.

Many have no happier moments than those that they pass in solitude, abandoned to their own imagination, which sometimes puts sceptres in their hands, or mitres on their heads, shifts the scene of pleasure with endless variety, bids all the forms of beauty sparkle before them, and gluts them with every change of visionary luxury. -Johnson.

MCLIV.

The time was once, when wit drown'd wealth; but now, Your only barbarism is t' have wit, and want.

No matter now in virtue who excels,
He that hath coin, hath all perfection else.

MCLV.

Ben Jonson.

Philosophers say, that man is a microcosm, or a little world resembling in miniature every part of the great; and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic; and if this be so, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy.—Swift.

MCLVI.

The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made, as it were, too big for it; and extend themselves in the prospect of a longer existence, in good fame, and memory of worthy actions, after our decease.-Steele.

MCLVII.

We find but few historians in all ages, who have been diligent enough in their search for truth: it is their common method to take on trust what they distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.-Dryden.

MCLVIII.

The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes, and furred gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks:
Arm it in rags, a pigmy straw doth pierce it.

MCLIX.

Shakspeare.

None has more frequent conversations with disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry credi

tors, continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.-Goldsmith.

MCLX.

Love's but the frailty of the mind,
When 'tis not with ambition join'd;

A sickly flame, which, if not fed, expires;
And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires.

MCLXI.

Congreve,

All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it, from the impossibility to escape it.-Steele.

MCLXII.

When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.Addison.

MCLXIII.

There is nothing which must end, to be valued for its continuance. If hours, days, months, and years pass away, it is no matter what hour, what day, what month, or what year we die. The applause of a good actor is due to him at whatever scene of the play he makes his exit. It is thus in the life of a man of sense; a short life is sufficient to manifest himself a man of honour and virtue; when he ceases to be such, he has lived too long; and while he is such, it is of no consequence to him how long he shall be so, provided he is so to his life's end.— Steele.

So court a mistress, she denies you:
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly then,
Styl'd but the shadows of us men?

MCLXV.

Ben Jonson.

It has been said that he who retires to solitude is either a beast or an angel; the censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited; the discontented being, who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man, who has begun his life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind. -Goldsmith.

MCLXVI.

But she did scorn a present that I sent her.

A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her.
Send her another; never give her o'er;

For scorn at first makes after-love the more.
If she do frown, 'tis not in hate of you:
But rather to beget more love in you:
If she do chide, 'tis not to have you gone;
For why, the fools are mad, if left alone.
Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;
For, get you gone, she doth not mean, away:
Flatter, and praise, commend, extol their graces;
"Though ne'er so black, say they have angel's faces,
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

MCLXVII.

Shakspeare.

Ovid, sen. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, what was he? what was he?

Tucca. Marry, I'll tell thee, old swaggerer: he was a poor, blind rhyming, rascal, that lived obscurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep.

Ovid, sen. You'll tell me his name shall live; and that