Force does but whet our wits t'apply For, when ye 've try'd all sorts of ways, And have your brains beat out o' your heads. CCXLVII. It is but too often the fate of scholars to be servile and poor. Many of them are driven to hard shifts, and turn from grasshoppers into humble bees, from humble bees into wasps, and from wasps into parasites, making the muses their mules to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat: their abilities and knowledge only serving them to curse their fooleries with better grace. They have store of gold without knowing how to turn it to advantage; and, like the innocent Indians, are drained of their riches without receiving a suitable reward.-Burton. CCXLVIII. The good advocate not onely heares but examines his client, and pincheth the cause where he fears it is foundred. For many clients in telling their case, rather plead than relate it, so that the advocate hears not the true state of it, till opened by the adverse party. Surely, the lawyer that fills himself with instructions, will travell longest in the cause without tiring. Others that are so quick in searching, seldom searche to the quicke; and those miraculous apprehensions who understand more than all, before the client hath told halfe, runne without their errand, and will return without their answer.-Fuller. CCXLIX. A good mien in a court will carry a man greater lengths than a good understanding in any other place. We see VOL. II. F a world of pains taken, and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and, after all, the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want common sense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is, that wisdom, valour, justice, and learning, cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellences, if he want that inferior art of life and behaviour, called good-breeding.-Steele. CCL. It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.-Pope. CCLI. (Love.) I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip; A very beadle to a humorous sigh: This wimpled, wining, purblind, wayward boy; * Sole emperator and great general And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! CCLII. Skakspeare. Our minds are of such a make, that they naturally give themselves up to every diversion which they are much She accustomed to, and we always find that play, when followed with assiduity, engrosses the whole woman. quickly grows uneasy in her own family, takes but little pleasure in all the domestic innocent endearments of life, and grows more fond of Pam, than of her husband.Guardian. CCLIII. Were a man of pleasure to arrive at the full extent of his several wishes, he must immediately feel himself miserable. It is one species of despair to have no room to hope for any addition to one's happiness. His following wish must then be to wish he had some fresh object for his wishes: a strong argument that our minds and bodies were both meant to be for ever active.-Shenstone. CCLIV. Scholars cannot avoid the painful and alarming recollection, that in this race for literary fame, "many are called, but few chosen;" and that the high distinction which accompanies the character of a real scholar, depends more upon nature than art: all are not equally capable and docile; ex omni ligno non fit Mercurius. Kings may create majors, knights, barons, and other officers, but cannot make scholars, philosophers, artists, orators, and poets.-Burton. CCLV. A young raw preacher is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made in it himself, is the faces. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits with a very good grace. His style is compounded of twenty several men's, only his body imitates some one extraordinary. He will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose without discretion. His commendation is, that he never looks upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday; for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks with a sermon, than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. if he have waded farther in his profession, and would show reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school-divinity a catechism.-Bishop Earle. CCLVI. Those alone may be vouched for who are good alone. Those who are not good alone, may be bettered by association; good company cannot pejorate.-Zimmerman. CCLVII. When you have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does there remain, which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year?-Cowley. CCLVIII. Every one that flatters thee, Words are easy like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. Every man will be thy friend, Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend; But if store of crowns be scant, Bountiful they will him call; 66 Pity but he were a king." CCLIX. Shakspeare. If wit is to be measured by the circumstances of time and place, there is no man has generally so little of that talent as he who is a wit by profession. What he says, instead of arising from the occasion, has an occasion invented to bring it in. Thus he is new for no other rea son, but that he talks like nobody else: but has taken up a method of his own, without commerce of dialogue with other people.-Steele. CCLX. Great wits have only been preferred In princes' trains to be interr'd, And, when they cost them nothing, plac'd, But while they liv'd were far enough CCLXI. Butler. A moderate knowledge in the little rules of goodbreeding, gives a man some assurance, and makes him easy in all companies. For want of this, I have seen a professor of a liberal science at a loss to salute a lady: and a most excellent mathematician not aole to determine whether he should stand or sit while my lord drank to him.—Budgell. CCLXII. Whoever shall know himself may boldly be his own trumpeter, and listen with less danger to parasites and flatterers, who, with immoderate praise, bombast epithets, glozing titles, and false eulogiums, so bedaub, applaud, and gild over many a silly undeserving man, that they drive him quite out of his wits.-Montaigne. CCLXIII. The greatest authors in their most serious works, made frequent use of puns. The sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakspeare, are full of them. The sinner was punned into repentance by the former, as in the latter nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and quibbling for a dozen lines together.-Addison. CCLXIV. Those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain. |