he calls Les Petits Esprits, such things as our uppergallery audience in a playhouse; who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they made the greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of it is, they are but a sort of French huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds, but not naturalized; who have not lands of two pounds per annum in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll. Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden; yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment) they soon forsake them."--Dryden.

CXCVI./

Similes, drawn from odd circumstances and effects strangely accidental, bear a near relation to false wit. The best instance of the kind is that celebrated line of Waller:

"He grasp'd at love, and fill'd his hand with bays."

CXCVII./

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,
A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies, when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle glass, that's broken presently:
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As faded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie wither'd on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress,

So beauty blemish'd once, for ever's lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.

CXCVIII./98

Shakspeare.

Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures; and whatever falls in with it, will meet admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions. Moliere, as we are told by Monsieur Boileau, used to read all his comedies to an old woman, who was his housekeeper, as she sat with him at her work by the chimney-corner; and could foretell the success of his play in the theatre, from the reception it met at his fireside, for he tells us the audience always followed the old woman, and never failed to laugh in the same place.—Addison.

CXCIX.,99

He surely is most in want of another's patience, who has none of his own.-Lavater.

CC. 2

A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happen to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately. Shenstone.

CCI. 20/

Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,
Born where heav'n's influence scarce can penetrate:
In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,
They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
Though the same sun with all-diffusive rays
Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze,
We prize the effort of his stronger pow'r,
And justly set the gem above the flow'r.

CCII. 22

Pope.

As the laws are above magistrates, so are the magis trates above the people and it may truly be said, that

2

the magistrate is a speaking law, and the law a silent magistrate.-Cicero.

CCIII.

203

They that govern most make least noise. You see when they row in a barge, they that do drudgery work, slash, and puff, and sweat; but he that governs, sits quietly at the stern, and scarce is seen to stir.-Selden.

CCIV. 204

Who would believe what strange bugbears
Mankind creates itself, of fears,

That spring, like fern, that insect weed,
Equivocally, without seed,

And have no possible foundation,

But merely in th' imagination?

And yet can do more dreadful feats

Than hags, with all their imps and teats;
Make more bewitch and haunt themselves,
Than all their nurseries of elves.

For fear does things so like a witch,
'Tis hard t' unriddle which is which;
Set up communities of senses,
To chop and change intelligences;
As Rosicrucian virtuosis

Can see with ears, and hear with noses;
And, when they neither see nor hear,
Have more than both supply'd by fear,
That makes them in the dark see visions,
And hag themselves with apparitions,
And, when their eyes discover least,
Discern the subtlest objects best.

ccv. 40

Butler.

All wit and humour, however excellent it may be in itself, which in the smallest degree wounds the feelings of another, is coarse unfeeling horse-play; and no person who possesses either piety, grace, or good manners, will use such jests as are mordentes et aculeati, bitter,

2

poisoned, injurious, or which in any way leave a sting behind them.-Burton.

CCVI. 206

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.-Shenstone.

CCVII. 247

Reasons are the pillars of the fabrick of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best light. The faithful minister avoids such stories, whose mention may suggest bad thoughts to the auditours, and will not use a light comparison to make thereof a grave application, for fear lest his poyson go further than his antidote. -Fuller.

CCVIII.2

If our sex were wise, a lover should have a certificate from the last woman he served, how he was turned away, before he was received into the service of another; but at present any vagabond is welcome, provided he promises to enter into our livery. It is wonderful, that we will not take a footman without credentials from his last master: and in the greatest concern of life, we make no scruple of falling into a treaty with the most notorious offender in this behaviour against others. But this breach of commerce between the sexes proceeds from an unaccountable prevalence of custom, by which a woman is to the last degree reproachable for being deceived, and a man suffers no loss of credit for being a deceiver.-Tatler.

CCIX. 209

As a man's salutation, so is the total of his character; in nothing do we lay ourselves so open, as in our mannet of meeting and salutation.-Lavater.

'Tis not now who's stout and bold? But who bears hunger best, and cold?

And he's approv'd the most deserving,
Who longest can hold out at starving;
And he that routs most pigs and cows,
The formidablest man of prowess.
So th' Emperor Caligula,

That triumph'd o'er the British sea,
Took crabs and oysters prisoners,
And lobsters, 'stead of cuirasiers ;
Engag'd his legions in fierce bustles,
With perriwinkles, prawns, and mussels,
And led his troops with furious gallops,
To charge whole regiments of scallops;
Not like their ancient way of war,
To wait on his triumphal car;
But when he went to dine or sup,
More bravely ate his captives up,
And left all war, by his example,
Reduc'd to vict❜ling of a camp well.

CCX1.2//

Butler

Instead of whining complaints concerning the imagined ruelty of their mistresses, if poets would address the same to their muse, they would act more agreeable to nature and to truth.-Shenstone.

CCXII. 2/2

Judge we by nature? habit can efface,
Int'rest o'ercome, or policy take place.
By actions? those uncertainty divides;
By passions? these dissimulation hides.
Opinions? they still take a wider range :
Find, if you can, in what you cannot change.
Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times.

CCXIII. 2/3.

Pope.

Perhaps a rhymer is as necessary among servants of a house, as a dobbin with his bells at the head of a team. -Swift's Advice to a Young Poet.