XIV. Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruit breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the virtue of their possessor.-Burton. XV. Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.— Addison. XVI. I know no friends more faithful, more inseparable, than hard-heartedness and pride, humility and love, lies and impudence.-Lavater. XVII. 'Tis a mystery to me, that married people, however they behave themselves to one another in private, should not take care to preserve a fair outside, at least, before strangers. I knew a gentleman and his wife, who treated one another in public with all the respect and civility that can be imagined, so that you would swear they were the most affectionate couple that ever graced the state of matrimony, since the concatenation of Adam and Eve in Paradise. But when they were by themselves, the case was altered, and they showed themselves in their proper shapes.-The Militant Couple.-Buckingham. XVIII. The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours, is very properly called the language of the art.—Sir J. Reynolds. XIX. An healthy old fellow, that is not a fool, is the happiest creature living It is at that time of life only, men enjoy their faculties with pleasure and satisfaction. It is then we have nothing to manage, as the phrase is; we speak the downright truth, and whether the rest of the world will give us the privilege or not, we have so little to ask of them, that we can take it.-Steele. XX. A knave is like a tooth-drawer, that maintains his own teeth in constant eating by pulling out those of other men. He is an ill moral philosopher, of villainous principles, and as bad practice. His tenets are to hold what he can get, right or wrong. His tongue and his heart are always at variance, and fall out like rogues in the street, to pick somebody's pocket. They never agree but, like Herod and Pilate, to do mischief. His conscience never stands in his light, when the devil holds a candle to him; for he has stretched it so thin that it is transparent. He is an engineer of treachery, fraud, and perfidiousness; and knows how to manage matters of great weight with very little force, by the advantage of his trepanning screws. He is very skilful in all the mechanics of cheat, the mathematical magic of imposture; and will outdo the expectations of the most credulous, to their own admiration and undoing. He is an excellent founder, and will melt down a leaden fool, and cast him into what form he pleases. He is like a pike in a pond, that lives by rapine, and will sometimes venture on one of his own kind, and devour a knave as big as himself; he will swallow a fool a great deal bigger than himself; and if he can but get his head within his jaws, will carry the rest of hanging out at his mouth, until by degrees he has digested him all. He has a hundred tricks to slip his neck out of the pillory without leaving his ears behind. As for the gallows, he never ventures to show his tricks upon the highrope, for fear of breaking his neck. He seldom commits any villainy, but in a legal way, and makes the law bear him out in that for which it hangs others. He always robs under the vizor of law, and picks pockets with tricks in equity. By his means the law makes more knaves ? than it hangs; and, like the inns of court, protects offenders against itself. He gets within the law and disarms it. His hardest labour is to wriggle himself into trust, which if he can but compass, his business is done; for fraud and treachery follow as easily as a thread does a needle. He grows rich by the ruin of his neighbours, like grass in the streets in a great sickness. He shelters himself under the covert of the law, like a thief in a hempplot, and makes that secure him which was intended for his destruction.-Butler. XXI. Royal bounties Are great and gracious, while they are dispensed In giving giant bulks to others, takes from The name of virtues, and their natures changed, XXII. Massinger. Reformation is a work of time. A national taste, now ever wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once, we must yield a little to the prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what would offend them, if endeavoured to be introduced by violence.-Sir J. Reynolds. XXIII. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall.-Confucius. XXIV. The estimate and valour of a man consist in the heart and in the will; there his true honour lives; valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul; it does not lie in the valour of our horse, nor of our arms, but in ourselves. He that falls obstinate in his courage, Si succiderit de genu pugnat; if his legs fail him, fights upon his knees.-Montaigne. XXV. In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame; because the materials are always prepared for it.-Hume. XXVI Be not mealy-mouthed in refusing him that you are satisfied has a pique against you; and let it be no inducement to trust him because he has confided in you. For if you invite, you must expect to be invited again, and some time or other your entertainment will be repaid you, if bashfulness has once softened or turned the edge of that diffidence which ought to be your guard.— Plutarch. XXVII. It is a common and just observation, that, when the meaning of any thing is dubious, one can no way better judge of the true intent of it, than by considering who is the author, what is his character in general, and his disposition in particular.-Pope. XXVIII. Haste and rashnesse are storms and tempests, breaking and wrecking businesse, but nimblenesse is a full, fair wind, blowing it with speed to the haven.-Fuller XXIX. Human nature is not so much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some part of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice ; and we love truth too well to resist the charms of sincerity.-Steele. XXX. There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan. There is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan; insomuch, that, if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes. -Addison. XXXI. There is, perhaps, nothing more easy than to write properly for the English theatre; I am amazed that none are apprenticed to the trade. The author, when well acquainted with the value of thunder and lightning, when versed in all the mystery of scene-shifting and trap-doors, when skilled in the proper periods to introduce a wire walker or a waterfall; when instructed in every actor's peculiar talent, and capable of adapting his speeches to the supposed excellence; when thus instructed, knows all that can give a modern audience pleasure.-Goldsmith. XXXII. The task of our present writers requires, together with that learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse and accurate observation of the living world. Their performances have, as Horace expresses it, plus oneris quantum veniæ minus, little indulgence, and therefore more difficulty. They are engaged in portraits of which every one knows the original, and can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. Other writings are safe, except from the malice of learning, but these are in danger from every common reader; as the slipper ill-executed was censured by a shoemaker who happened to stop in his way at the Venus of Apelles.-Johnson. XXXIII. As none but kings have pow'r to raise A wit-excise on verse or prose, |