DCCLXVI.

The generality of mankind are so very fond of this world, and of staying in it, that a man cannot have eminent skill in any one art, but they will, in spite of his teeth, make him a physician also, that being the science the worldlings have most need of.-Steele.

Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration: an emperor in his night-cap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown.-Goldsmith.

DCCLXIX.

The good merchant never demands out of distance of the price he intends to take. If not always within the touch, yet within the reach of what he means to sell for. Now we must know, there be foure severall prices of vendible things. First, the price of the market, which

ebbes and flows according to the plenty or scarcity o coyn, commodities, and chapmen. Secondly, the price of friendship, which perchance is more giving than selling, and therefore not so proper at this time. Thirdly the price of fancie, as twenty pounds or more for a dog or hawk, when no such inherent worth can naturally be in them, but by the buyers or sellers fancie reflecting on them. Yet, I believe, the money may lawfully be taken. First, because the seller sometimes, on those terms, is as loth to forego it, as the buyer is willing to have it. And I know no standard herein, whereby men's affections may be measured. Secondly, it being a matter of pleasure, and men able and willing, let them pay for it. "Volenti on fit injuria." Lastly, there is the price of cosenage, which our merchant from his heart detests and abhores. -Fuller.

DCCLXX.

Farewell ye gilded follies! pleasing troubles;
Farewell ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles;
Fame's but a hollow echo, gold pure clay,

Honour the darling but of one short day;

Beauty th' eyes' idol, but a damask d skin.
State, but a golden prison to live in

And torture free-born minds; embroider'd trains
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins;
And blood, allied to greatness, is alone
Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own.

Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth,
Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.

DCCLXXI.

Sir H. Wotton.

Astrology is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune. (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary in fluence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting

on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.-Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled at my bastardizing.-Shakspeare.

DCCLXXII.

It has been said in praise of some men, that they could talk whole hours together upon any thing; but it must be owned to the honour of the other sex, that there are many among them who can talk whole hours together upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in all the figures of rhetoric.-Addison.

DCCLXXIII.

The rich have still a gibe in store,
And will be monstrous witty on the poor;
For the torn surtout and the tatter'd vest,
The wretch and all his wardrobe are a jest:
The greasy gown sully'd with often turning,
Gives a good hint to say the man's in mourning;
Or if the shoe be ript, or patch is put,
He's wounded, see the plaster on his foot.
Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,
And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.

DCCLXXIV.

Dryden's Juvenal.

A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough: a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.-Pope.

DCCLXXV.

The way of fortune is like the milky way in the sky; which is a meeting or knot of a number of small stars, not

seen asunder, but giving light together so are there a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs that make men fortunate.-Lord Bacon.

DCCLXXVI.

Two beggars told me,

I could not miss my way: will poor folks lie,
That have afflictions on them; knowing 'tis
A punishment or trial? Yes; no wonder,
When rich ones scarce tell true: to lapse in fulness
Is sorer, than to lie for need; and falsehood
Is worse in kings, than beggars.

DCCLXXVII.

Shakspeare.

It is the boast of an Englishman that his property is secure, and all the world will grant, that a deliberate administration of justice is the best way to secure his property. Why have we so many lawyers but to secure our property? why so many formalities but to secure our property? Not less than one hundred thousand families live in opulence, elegance, and ease, merely by securing our property.-Goldsmith.

DCCLXXVIII.

I believe it is no wrong observation, that persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature. On the contrary, people of the common level of understanding are principally delighted with the little niceties and fantastical operations of art, and constantly think that finest which is least natural. A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. 1 know an eminent cook, who beautified his country seat with a coronation-dinner in greens; where you see the champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other.-Pope.

DCCLXXIX.

Irregularity in vision, together with such enormities,

as tipping the wink, the circumspective roll, the sidepeep through a thin hood or fan, must be put in the class of Heteroptics, as all wrong notions of religion are ranked under the general name of Heterodox.-Spectator.

DCCLXXX.

A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,
Is all the wealth by nature understood.
The monarch, on whom fertile Nile bestows
All which that grateful earth can bear,
Deceives himself, if he suppose

That more than this falls to his share.
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the lord;

But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Extracted from it by the tyrant lust.
Much will always wanting be

To him who much desires. Thrice happy he
To whom the wise indulgency of heaven,
With sparing hand, but just enough has given.
Cowley.

DCCLXXXI.

Hunger has a most amazing faculty of sharpening the genius; and he who, with a full belly, can think like a hero, after a course of fasting, shall rise to the sublimity of a demigod.-Goldsmith.

DCCLXXXII.

Swift alluding, in a letter, to the frequent instances o. a broken correspondence after a long absence, gives the following natural account of the causes :-" At first one omits writing for a little while-and then one stays little while longer to consider of excuses-and at last it grows desperate, and one does not write at all. "In thi manner" he adds, "I have served others, and have bee 'served myself."

DCCLXXXIII.

So quickly sometimes has the wheel turned round, that