LXXXVII. The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused but in a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigour, uniformity and success.-Goldsmith. LXXXVIII. He that impoverisheth his children to enrich his widow, destroys a quick hedge to make a dead one.-Fuller. LXXXIX. Many men knowing that merry company is the only medicine against melancholy, spend all their days among good fellows in a tavern or alehouse, drinking venenum pro vino, like so many malt-worms, men-fishes, watersnakes, or frogs in a puddle, and become mere funguses and casks.-Burton. XC. Man, with raging drink inflam'd, T'enlarge his life, perverts t' its end. XCI. Butler. A drunkard is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better. One that hath let go himself from the hold and stay of reason, and lies open to the mercies of all temptations. No lust but finds him disarmed and fenceless, and with the least assault enters. If any mischief escape him, it was not his fault, for he was laid as fair for it as he could. Every man sees him, as Cham saw his father the first of this sin, an uncovered man, and though his garment be on, uncovered; the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a scooping in of so many quarts. Tobacco serves to air him after a washing, and is his only breath and breathing while. He is the greatest enemy to himself, and the next to his friend, and then most in the act of his kindness, for his kindness is but trying a mastery, who shall sink down first: and men come from him as a battle, wounded and bound up. Nothing takes a man off more from his credit, and business, and makes him more retchlessly careless what becomes of all. Indeed, he dares not enter on a serious thought, or if he do, it is but such melancholy that it sends him to be drunk again.-Bishop Earle. XCII. In all ages, and in every nation where poetry has been in fashion, the tribe of sonnetteers hath been very numerous. Every pert young fellow that has a moving fancy, and the least jingle of verse in his head, sets up for a writer of songs, and resolves to immortalize his bottle or his mistress. What a world of insipid productions in this kind have we been pestered with since the revolution, to go no higher.-Steele. XCIII. Fade, flow'rs! fade, nature will have it so 'Tis what we must in our autumn do! And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground, Miss'd by some few that lov'd our company; That none for them can, when they perish, grieve. XCIV. It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can be made of nothing: he who has laid up no materials, can produce no combination.-Sir J. Reynolds. XCV. An ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people, cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the entertainment by their affec tation or ignorance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature, which recommend it to the most ordinary reader, will appear beautiful to the most refined. The old song of Chevy-Chase is the favourite ballad of the common people of England; and Ben Jonson used to say, he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of poetry, speaks of it in the following words: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous cloquence of Pindar?"-Addison. XCVI. Custom, tho' but usher of the school C Usurps a greater pow'r and interest And that's one reason why more care's bestow'd XCVII. Butler. A man coming to the waterside, is surrounded by all the crew; every one is officious, every one making applications, every one offering his services, the whole bustle of the place seems to be only for him: the same man going from the waterside, no noise is made about him, no creature takes notice of him, all let him pass with utter neglect. The picture of a minister when he comes into power, and when he goes out.-Pope. XCVIII. Orators and stage coachmen, when the one wants arguments and the other a coat of arms, adorn their cause and their coaches with rhetoric and flowerpots.-Shenstone. XCIX. Looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth: But blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth. C. The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception, his spirit, and design, he is hardly below even the poet, in liberal art.-Steele. CI. Be not the fourth friend of him who had three before and lost them.-Lavater. CII. To a huntsman, His toil is his delight, and to complain CIII. Massinger. We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression; the heart of a wise man should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object without being sullied by any. -Confucius. CIV. There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world; to despise it; to return the like, or to endeavour to live so as to avoid it: the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second. CV. Swift. Self-love and morosity, together with luxury and effeminacy, breed in us long and frequent fits of anger; which, by little and little, are gathered together into our souls, like a swarm of bees and wasps.-Plutarch. CVI. If, instead of furnishing a room with separate portraits, a whole family were to be introduced into a single piece, and represented under some interesting historical subject, suitable to their rank and character, portraits which are now so generally and so deservedly despised, might become of real value to the public. By this means history painting would be encouraged among us, and a ridiculous vanity to the improvement of one of the most instructive, as well as the most pleasing, of the imitative arts. Those who never contributed a single benefit to their own age, nor will ever be mentioned in any after-one, might by this means employ their pride and their expense in a way which might render them entertaining and useful both to the present and future times.-Fitzosborne's Letters |