books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and fome few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that fhould be only in the lefs important arguments, and the meaner forts of books; elfe diftilled books are like common diftilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a prefent wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to feem to know that he doth not. BACON. CHAP. X. ON SATIRICAL WIT. -TRUST me, this unwary pleafantry of thine will fooner or later bring thee into fcrapes and difficulties, which no after wit can extricate thee out of. In these fallies, too oft I fee, it happens, that the perfon laughed at confiders himself in the light of a perfon injured, with all the rights of fuch a fituation belonging to him; and when thou vieweft him in that light too, and reckoneft upon his friends, his family, his kindred and allies, and muftereft up with them the many recruits which will lift under him from a fense of common danger; 'tis no extravagant arithmetic to fay, that for every ten jokes, thou haft got an hundred enemies; and, till thou haft gone on, and raised a swarm of wafps about thine ears, and art half ftung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is fo. I CANNOT fufpect it in the man whom I efteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in thefe fallies. I believe and know them to be truly honeft and sportive; but confider, that fools cannot diftinguish this, and that knaves will not; and thou knoweft not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry with the other; whenever they affociate for mutual defence, depend upon it they will carry on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily fick of it, and of thy life too. REVENGE from fome baneful corner fhall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct fhall fet right. The fortunes of thy house shall totter thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every fide of it-thy faith queftioned-thy works belied-thy wit forgotten-thy learning trampled on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, CRUELTY and CowARDICE, twin ruffians, hired and fet on by MALICE in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes; the best of us, my friend, lie open there, and trust mewhen to gratify a private appetite, it is once refolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be facrificed, it is an eafy matter to pick up fticks enough from any thicket where it has ftrayed, to make a fire to offer it up with. STERNE. CHAP. XI. HAMLET'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PLAYERS. SPEAK the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town crier had spoke my lines. And do not faw the air too much with your hand thus; but ufe all gently; for in the very torrent, tempeft, and, as I may fay, whirlwind of your paffion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothnefs. Oh! it offends me to the foul, to hear a robuftious perriwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb fhews and noife: I would have fuch a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing termagant; it out-herods Herod, Pray you, avoid it. BE not too tame neither; but let your own difcretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this fpecial obfervance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing fo overdone is from the purpose of playing; whofe end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to fhew virtue her own feature, fcorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the censure of one of which must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have feen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, (not to speak it profanely) that, neither having the accent of Chriftian, nor the gait of Chriftian, Pagan, nor man, have so ftrutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well, they imitated humanity fo abominably. AND let thofe that play your clowns, speak no more than is fet down for them: for there be of them that will them felves laugh, to fet on fome quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, fome neceffary queftion of the play be then to be confidered:—that's villainous : and fhews a moft pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. SHAKESPEARE. CHAP. XII. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDICATED. HEAV'N from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prefcrib'd, their present state: From From brutes what men, from men what spirits know, Or who could fuffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Hope humbly then, with trembling pinions foar ; Lo, the poor Indian! whofe untutor❜d mind He afks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire : Go, Go, wiser thou! and in thy fcale of sense, CHAP. XIII. РОРЕ. ON THE ORDER OF NATURE. SEE thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth, And, |