out his own fatisfaction, people would be apt to pursue the injury too close, and strike immediately on receiving the blow. They would often do themselves right at the first fmart of an affront, when the provocation was fresh and the anguish most stinging. Paffing too eagerly upon a provocation, lofes the guard and lays open the body: calmness and leifure and deliberation do the business much better.-JEREMY COLLIER. 3. WHEN any one person or body of men, feize into their hands the power in the last refort, there is properly no longer a Government; but what Ariftotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.-SWIFT. Gray's Opinion of Tacitus. MAN who could join the brilliancy of wit and concise fententioufness peculiar to that age, with the truth and gravity of better times, and the deep reflection and good sense of the moderns, cannot choose but have * The Poft-Augustan. something to strike you. Yet what I admire in him, † above all this, is his deteftation of tyranny and the high fpirit of liberty, that every now and then breaks out, as it were, whether he would or no. I remember a sentence in his Agricola, that, concise as it is, I always admired, for faying fo much in a little compafs. He fpeaks of Domitian, who upon feeing the laft will of Agricola, wherein he had made him co-heir with his wife and daughter, "Satis conftabat lætatem velut honore judicioque; tam cæca et corrupta mens affiduis adulationibus erat, ut nefciret a bono patre non fcribi hæredem, nifi malum principem."-GRAY's Letters to Weft. Greatness. E can have no pofitive idea of any space or duration, which is not made up of and commenfurate to repeated numbers of feet or yards + Tacitus. or days or years, and whereby we judge of the greatness of these fort of quantities. LOCKE. 2. IN her every thing was goodly and ftately; yet so that it might seem, that greatmindedness was but the ancient-bearer to the humblenefs.-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 3. A GREAT man is affable in his converfation, generous in his temper, and immoveable in what he has maturely refolved upon. And as profperity does not make him haughty and imperious, fo neither does adversity sink him into meanness and dejection: for if ever he shows more spirit than ordinary, it is when he is ill-used, and the world is frowning upon him. In fhort, he is equally removed from the extremes of servility and pride, and scorns either to trample on a worm, or cringe to an Emperor. - JEREMY COL LIER. Hereditary Fame. REAT actions in which we had no fhare, cannot properly be any part of our commendation, efpecially if we want abilities to imitate them. It is a fign that a man is very poor when he has nothing of his own to appear in, but is forced to patch up his figure with the relics of the dead, and rifle tombftones and monuments for reputation. If a man could bequeath his virtues by will, and fettle his fenfe and learning and refolutions upon his children, as certainly as he can his lands, a brave ancester would be a mighty privilege.-JEREMY COLLIER. 2. THE fecond natural divifion of power, is of fuch men, who have acquired large poffeffions and, confequently, dependencies; or defcend from ancestors, who have left them great inheritances, together with an hereditary authority and title; these perfons ufually unite in thoughts and opinions. Thus commences a great Council or Senate of Nobles, for the weighty affairs of the nation. -SWIFT. 3. In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honour are generally correfpondent with the virtues of the perfon to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination ftill continues, but the intrinfic value is frequently loft.-ADDISON. Herefy. OR my own part, I adhere to the not even read any of the works of heretics fo called, when the mistakes of those who are reckoned for orthodox, and their incautious handling of Scripture, first taught me to agree with their opponents whenever thofe opponents agreed with Scripture. If this be herefy, I agree with St. |