Blasts of envious fortune; whilst the low
And humble valley fortunes are far more secure.
Humble valleys thrive with their bosoms full
Of flow'rs, when hills melt with lightning, and
The rough anger of the clouds.

MIV.

Ford.

Honesty treats with the world upon such vast disad vantage, that a pen is often as useful to defend you as a sword, by making writing the witness of your contracts; for where profit appears, it doth commonly cancel the bands of friendship, religion, and the memory of any thing that can produce no other register than what is verbal.- Osborn.

MV.

Such ones ill judge of Love, that cannot love
Ne in their frozen hearts feel kindly flame;
For-thy they ought not thing unknown reprove,
Ne natural affection faultless blame,

For fault of few that have abus'd the same.
For it of honour and all virtue is

The root, and brings forth glorious flowers of fame,
That crown true lovers with immortal bliss;

The meed of them that love, and do not love amiss.

MVI.

Spenser.

A man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.Lord Bacon.

MVII.

If we should do nothing,

Of that necessary must come ill: I'll

Prove it too. Of doing nothing comes idleness,
Of idleness comes no goodness; of no

Goodness necessary comes ill: therefore
If we do nothing, of necessity

We must do ill.

Brome.

MVIII.

It is pleasant to hear pretty rogues talk of virtue and vice among each other. She is the laziest creature in the world, but, I must confess, strictly virtuous; the peevishest hussy breathing; but as to her virtue, she is without blemish. She has not the least charity for any of her acquaintance, but I must allow her rigidly virtuous. As the unthinking part of the male world cal! every man a man of honour, who is not a coward; so the crowd of the other sex terms every woman who will not be a wench, virtuous.-Steele.

MIX.

What is 't to us, if taxes rise or fall,

Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all.
Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal,
Lament those hardships which we cannot feel.
His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please,
But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
By custom safe, the Poet's numbers flow,
Free as the light and air some years ago.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
Burthens like these will earthly buildings bear,
No tribute's laid on castles in the air.

MX.

Churchill

There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading Controversies, his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds more firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach, that contraries laid together more evidently appear: it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true: which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of unimplicit truth.-Milton.

MXI.

Pride, in some particular disguise or other, (often a secret to the proud man himself) is the most ordinary spring of action among men. You need no more than to discover what a man values himself for: then of all things admire that quality, but be sure to be failing in it yourself in comparison of the man whom you court.-Steele.

MXII.

Oh Jealousy,

Love's eclipse! thou art in thy disease,

A wild mad patient wondrous hard to please.

It is a fruitless undertaking to write for men of a nice and foppish gusto, whom after all it is impossible to please; and it is still more chimerical to write for posterity, of whose taste we cannot make any judgment, and whose applause we can never enjoy.-Swift.

MXIV.

Instructive Satire! true to virtue's cause!
Thou shining supplement of public laws!
When flatter'd crimes of a licentious age
Reproach our silence, and demand our rage;
When purchas'd follies, from each distant land,
Like arts, improve in Britain's skilful hand;
When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite,
And South-sea treasures are not brought to light;
When churchmen Scripture for the classics quit,
Polite apostates from God's grace to wit;
When men grow great from their revenue spent,
And fly from bailiffs into parliament;

To chase our spleen, when themes like these increase,
Shall panegyric reign, and censure cease?

MXV.

Young.

A gentleman who was one day slumbering in an arbour, was on a sudden awakened by the gentle biting of a lizard, a little animal remarkable for its love to man

kind. He threw it from his hand with some indignation, and was rising to kill it, when he saw a huge venomous serpent sliding towards him on the other side, which he soon destroyed; reflecting afterwards with gratitude upon his friend that saved him, and with anger against himself, that had shown so little sense of a good office.-Tatler.

MXVI.

Unfit for Greatness, I her snares defy,
And look on riches with untainted eye.
To others let the glitt'ring baubles fall,
Content shall place us far above them all.
Churchill.

MXVII.

I is better that evil men should be left in undisturbed possession of their repute, how unjustly soever they may have acquired it, than that the exchange and credit of mankind should be universally shaken, wherein the best too will suffer and be involved.-Marvell.

MXVIII.

Where be the sweet delights of Learning's treasure,
That wont with Comick sock to beautify
The painted theatres, and fill with pleasure
The listner's eyes and ears with melody;

In which I late was wont to reign as queen
And mask in mirth with graces well beseen?
O! all is gone: and all that goodly glee,
Which wont to be the glory of gay wits,
Is laid a-bed, and no where now to see;
And in her room unseemly sorrow sits,
With hollow brows, and griesly countenance,
Marring my joyous gentle dalliance.

All that the Comick stage

With season'd wit, and goodly pleasure grac'd;
By which man's life, in his likest image;

Was limned forth, are wholly now defac'd:

And those sweet wits, which wont the like to frame, Are now despis'd, and made a laughing game.

And he the man whom Nature's self hath made
To mock herself, and Truth to imitate;
With kindly counter under mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

Tears of the Muses-Thalia-Spenser.

MXIX.

Examples make a greater impression upon us than precepts. The sight of Sir Edward Bh, running after a coach for sixpence, will sooner reclaim a prodigal, than a sermon.-Tom Brown.

MXX.

Much reading, like a too great repletion, stops up, through a course of diverse, sometimes contrary, opinions, the access of a nearer, newer, and quicker invention of your own.-Osborn.

MXXI.

How empty Learning, and how vain is Art, But as it mends the life, and guides the heart!

What volumes have been swell'd, what time been spent, To fix a hero's birth-day, or descent!

MXXII.

Young.

A likeness of inclinations in every particular is so far from being requisite to form a benevolence in two minds towards each other, as it is generally imagined, that I believe we shall find some of the firmest friendships to have been contracted between persons of different humours; the mind being often pleased with those perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own accomplishments. Besides that a man in some measure supplies his own defects, and fancies himself at second-hand possessed of those good qualities and endowments which are in the possession of him who in the eye of the world is looked on as his other selfBudgell.