/fi
PROSE QUOTATIONS
PROSE QUOTATIONS
SOCRATES TO MACAULAY
WITH INDEXES.
A.TJTHOH.S, B44; SUBJECTS, 671; QtrOT.A.TIOlTS, B81O
^ AUSTIN ALLIBONE,
1UTHOR OF "A CRITICAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN AITTH 5M
" POETICAL QUOTATIONS FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON," ETC.
"Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private recordes, and evi-
dences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and ihe like, we doe save and recover
somewhat from the deluge of time."
LORD BACON : The A dvancement of Learning.
PHILADELPH I A :
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1903.
629080
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washingi on
Copyright, 1903, by MARY HENRY ALLIBONE.
TO MY FRIEND,
GEORGE W. HILL,
WHOSE CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY, ENTERPRISE, AND ENERGY HAVE
GIVEN HIM A JUST CLAIM TO THE ESTEEM OF
HIS FELLOW-CITIZENS,
THE THIRD OF MY DICTIONARIES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE.
PHILADELPHIA, March 12, 1875.
PREFACE.
I HAVE now the satisfaction of presenting to the public the third of the
series of Dictionaries of English Literature originally projected about a
quarter of a century since. In these works I have had the great advan-
tage of profiting by the labours of my predecessors in the same fertile
fields. The Dictionaries of Johnson, Webster, and Worcester, and the
excellent compilation of Henry Southgate entitled " Many Thoughts of
Many Minds," First Series, have furnished me with many quotations ; but
the most valuable portions of the present volume have been derived from
the " Tatlers" and " Spectators" of Addison and Steele, " The Rambler"
of Dr. Johnson, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, Edmund Burke, Robert
Hall, and Montaigne, and the vigorous, brilliant, and thoughtful " Essays"
of Lord Macaulay. I would especially recommend to the attention ol
the intelligent reader the subjects, AUTHORS, AUTHORSHIP, BIBLE, BOOKS
CHRIST, CHRISTIANITY, CONSCIENCE, CONVERSATION, CRITICISM, DEATH,
DRAMA, EDUCATION, ENGLAND, FREEDOM, FRIENDSHIP, GOD, GOVERN-
MENT, HISTORY, INDEXES, INSANITY, JUDGES, LAW, LAWYERS, LIFE, LIT-
ERATURE, LOVE, MAN, MANNERS, MATRIMONY, MEMORY, ORATORY, PARTY,
'ATRIOTISM, PHILOSOPHY, POETRY, POLITICS, PREACHING, READING, RE-
JGION, SIN, STATES, STUDIES, STYLE, TALKING, TRANSLATION, TRUTH,
'IRTUE, WAR, WISDOM, WIT, WORDS, and YOUTH. To no student who
las devoted the best years of his life to anxious and assiduous labour are
success and miscarriage empty sounds ;" and no author Dr. Johnson
the contrary notwithstanding " dismisses" the result of such labour
with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from
raise ;' but I can truly affirm that I aim rather to instruct than to amuse
my readers, and that I greatly prefer the hope of usefulness to the cer-
tainty of fame.
S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE.
1816, SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA, April 17, 1875.
xi
DICTIONARY
OF
PROSE QUOTATIONS.
ABRIDGMENTS.
We love, we own, to read the great produc-
tions of the human mind as they were written.
We have this feeling even about scientific treat-
ises, though we know that the sciences are al-
ways in a state of progression, and that the alter-
ations made by a modern editor in an old book
on any branch of natural or political philosophy
are likely to be improvements. Some errors have
been detected by writers of this generation in the
speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has
been made to much knowledge at which Sir
Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and cir-
cuitous paths. Yet we still look with peculiar
veneration on the Wealth of Nations and on the
Principia, and should regret to see either of these
great works garbled even by the ablest hands.
But in works which owe much of their interest
to the character and situation of the writers, the
is infinitely stronger. What man of taste
d feeling can endure rifacimenti, harmonies,
idgments, expurgated editions? Who ever
ds a stage copy of a play when he can pro-
re the original? Who ever cut open Mrs.
Siddons's Milton ? Who ever got through ten
pages of Mr. Gilpin's translation of John Bun-
yan's Pilgrim into modern English ? Who would
lose, in the confusion of a Diatessaron, the pe-
culiar charm which belongs to the narrative of
the disciple whom Jesus loved ? The feeling of
a reader who has become intimate with any great
original work is that which Adam expressed
towards his bride :
" Should God create another Eve, and 1
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart."
No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will
fill the void left by the original. The second
beauty may be equal and superior to the first ;
but still it is not she.
LORD MACAULAY:
Bonvclfs Life of Johnson, Sept., 1831.
No skilful reader of the plays of Shakspeare
can endure to see what are called the best things
taken out, under the name of " Beauties" or of
" Elegant Extracts," or to hear any single pas-
sage, " To be or not to be," for example, quoted
as a sample of the great poet. " To be or not
to be" has merit undoubtedly as a composition.
It would have merit if put into the mouth of a
chorus. But its merit as a composition vanishes
when compared with its merit as belonging to
Hamlet. It is not too much to say that the gi eat
plays of Shakspeare would lose less by being
deprived of all the passages which are commonly
called the fine passages than those passages lose
by being read separately from the play. This is
perhaps the highest praise which can be given
to a dramatist.
LORD MACAULAY :
Moore's Life of Byron, June, 1831.
Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have
the same use with burning glasses to collect the
diffused rays of wit and le&rning in authors, and
make them point with warmth and quickness
upon the reader's imagination. SWIFT.
ABSENCE.
Absence, what the poets call death in lov<:,
has given occasion to beautiful complaints in
those authors who have treated of this passion
in verse. ADDISON.
I distinguish a man that is absent because lie
thinks of something else, from him that is ab-
sent because he thinks of nothing.
ADDISON.
Absence destroys trifling intimacies, but h
invigorate* strong ones.
ROCI I EFOUCAULD.
(13)
ABSURDITIES. A CTIONS.
ABSURDITIES.
The greater absurdities are, the more strongly
they evince the falsity of that supposition from
whence they flow. ATTERBURY.
Absurdities are great or small in proportion
to custom or insuttude. LANDOR.
ACTIONS.
Actions are of so mixed a nature, that as
men pry into them, or observe some parts more
than others, they take different hints, and put
contrary interpretations on them.
ADDISON.
Outward actions can never give a just esti-
mate of us, since there are many perfections of
a man which are not capable of appearing in
actions. ADDISON.
He was particularly pleased with Sallust for
his entering into internal principles of action.
ADDISON.
A supenor capacity for business, and a more
extensive knowledge, are steps by which a new
man often mounts to favour and outshines the
rest of his contemporaries. ADDISON.
There is no greater wisdom than well to time
the beginnings and onsets of things.
LORD BACON.
When things are come to the execution, there
is no secrecy comparable to celerity.
LORD BACON.
Natures that have much heat, and great and
violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe
for action till they have passed the meridian of
their days. LORD BACON.
In choice of instruments it is better to choose
men of a plainer sort that are like to do that
that is committed to them, and to report faith-
fully the success, than those that are cunning to
contrive somewhat to grace themselves, and
will help the matter in report.
LORD BACON.
Some iron's behaviour is like a verse wherein
every syllable is measured : how can a man com-
prehend great matters that breaketh his mind too
much to small observations ? LORD BACON.
However, to act with any people with the
lt:ast degree of comfort, I believe we must con-
ti ive a little to assimilate to their character. We
must gravitate toward them, if we would keep
in the same system, or expect that they should
approach toward us. BURKE :
Letter to Hon. C. J. Fox, Oct. 8, 1777.
The progressive sagacity that keeps company
with times and occasions, and decides upon
things in their existing position, is that alone
which can give true propriety, grace, and effect
to a man's conduct. It is very hard to antici-
pate the occasion, and to live by a rule more
general. BURKE :
Letter to R. Shackleton, May 25, 1779.
The only things in which we can be said to
have any property are our actions. Our thoughts
may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be
good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be
taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by
malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by
disease, our friends by death. But our action*
must follow us beyond the grave: with respect
to them alone we cannot say that we shall carry
nothing with us when we die, neither that we
shall go naked out of the world. Our actions
must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome
or glorious : these are the only title-deeds of which
we cannot be disinherited; they will have their
full weight ir. the balance of eternity, when
everything else is as nothing ; and their value
will be confirmed and established by those two
sure and sateless destroyers of all other earthly
things, Time and Death.
COLTON: Lacon.
When yoting we trust ourselves too much, and
we trust others too little when old. Rashness
is the error of youth, timid caution of age.
Manhood is the isthmus between the two ex-
tremes : the ripe and fertile season of action,
when alone we can hope to find the head to
contrive united with the hand to execute.
COLTON : Lacon.
No two things differ more than hurry and
despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind,
despatch of a strong one.
COLTON : Lacon.
Hurry and Cunning are the two apprentices
of Despatch and of Skill, but neither of them
ever learn their master's trade.
COLTON : Lacon.
The causes and designs of an action are the
beginning; the effects of these causes, and the
difficulties met with in the execution of these
designs, are the middle; and the unravelling
and resolution of these difficulties are the end.
DRYDEN.
The actions of men are oftener determined
by their character than their interest : their con-
duct takes its colour more from their acquired
tastes, inclinations, and habits, than from a de-
liberate regard to their greatest good. It is only
on great occasions the mind awakes to take an
extended survey of her whole course, and that
she suffers the dictates of reason to impress a
new bias upon her movements. The actions of
each day are, for the most part, links which fol-
low each other in the chain of custom. Hence
the great effort of practical wisdom is to imbue
the mind with right tastes, affections, and habits ;
the elements of character and masters of action.
ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity.
The ways of well-doing are in number even
as many as are the kinds of voluntary actions :
so that whatsoever we do in this world, and may
do it ill, we show ourselves therein by well-
doing to be wise. HOOKER.
ACTIONS. ADDIS ON, JOSEPH.
Many men there are than whom nothing is
more commendable when they are singled ; and
yet, in society with others, none less fit to an-
swer the duties which are looked for at their
hands. HOOKER.
That every man should regulate his actions
by his own conscience, without any regard to
the opinions of the rest of the world, is one of
the first precepts of moral prudence; justified
not only by the suffrage of reason, which de-
clares that none of the gifts of Heaven are to
lie useless, but by the voice likewise of experi-
ence, which will soon inform us thai, if we
make the praise or blame of others the rule of
our conduct, we shall be distracted by a bound-
less variety of irreconcilable judgments, be held
in perpetual suspense between contrary impulses,
and consult forever without determination.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 23.
Act well at the moment, and you have per-
formed a good action to all eternity.
LAVATER.
The just season of doing things must be nicked,
and all accidents improved. L'ESTRANGE.
No man sets himself about anything but upon
some view or other which serves him for a
reason. LOCKE.
Actions have their preference, not according
to the transient pleasure or pain that accompanies
or follows them here, but as they serve to secure
that perfect durable happiness hereafter.
LOCKE.
Our voluntary actions are the precedent causes
of good and evil which they draw after them
ana bring upon us. LOCKE.
We will not, in civility, allow too much sin-
cerity to the professions of most men, but think
their actions to be interpreters of their thoughts.
LOCKE.
Action is the highest perfection and drawing
:h of the utmost power, vigour, and activity
of man's nature. God is pleased to vouchsafe
the best that he can give only to the best that
we can do. The properest and most raised con-
ception that we have of God is, that he is a pure
act, a perpetual, incessant motion. SOUTH.
The schools dispute, whether in morals the
external action superadds anything of good or
evil to the internal elicit act of the will : but
certainly the enmity of our judgments is wrought
up to an high pitch before it rages in an open
denial. SOUTH.
Since the event of an action usually follows
the nature or quality of it, and the quality fol-
lows the rule directing it, it concerns a man in
the framing of his actions not to be deceived in
the rule. SOUTH.
We may deny God in all those acts that are
capable of being morally good or evil : those
are the proper scenes in which we act our con-
fessions or denials of him. SOUTH.
Deeds always over-balance, and downright
practice speaks more plainly than the fairest
profession. SOUTH.
Fora man to found a confident practice upon
a disputable principle is brutishly to outrun his
reason. SOUTH.
Actions that promote society and mutual fel-
lowship seem reducible to a proneness to do
good to others and a ready sense of any good
done by others. SOUTH.
If he acts piously, soberly, and temperately,
he acts prudentially and safely. SOUTH.
We are not only to look at the bare action,
but at the reason of it. STILLINGFLEET.
Considering the usual motives of human ac-
tions, which are pleasure, profit, and ambition,
I cannot yet comprehend how these persons
find their account in any of the three.
SWIFT.
In every action reflect upon the end; and in
your undertaking it consider why you do it.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
It is not much business that distracts any man ;
but the want of purity, constancy, and tendency
towards God. JEREMY TAYLOR.
There is no action of man in this life, which
is not the beginning of so long a chain of con-
sequences, as that no human providence is high
enough to give us a prospect to the end.
THOMAS OF MALMESBURY.
In matters of human prudence, we shall find
the greatest advantage by making wise observa-
tions on our conduct. DR. I. WATTS.
ADDISON, JOSEPH.
The mere choice and arrangement of his
words would have sufficed to make his essays
classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not
even by Temple, had the English language been
written with such sweetness, grace, and facility.
But this was the smallest part of Addison's
praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the
half-French style of Horace Walpole, or in the
half-Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half-
German jargon of the present day, his genius
would have triumphed over all faults of manner.
As a moral satirist he stands unrivalled. If evci
the best Tatlers and Spectators were equalled in
their own kind, we should be inclined to guess
that it must have been by the lost comedies of
Menander.
In wit, properly so called, Addison was not
inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of
Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are
crowded into the lines of Sir Godfrey Kneller;
and we would undertake to collect from the
Spectators as great a number of ingenious illus-
trations as can be found in Hudibras. The
still higher faculty of invention Addisbr. pos-
10
ADDISON, JOSEPH.
sessed in still larger measure. The numerous
fictions, generally original, often wild and gro-
tesque, but always singularly graceful and happy,
which are found in his essays, fully entitle him
to the rank of a great poet, a rank to which his
metrical compositions give him no claim. As
an observer of life, of manners, of all the shades
of human character, he stands in the first class.
And what he observed he had the art of com-
municating in two widely different ways. He
could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as
well as Clarendon. But he could do something
better. He could call human beings into exist-
ence, and make them exhibit themselves. If
we wish to find anything more vivid than Addi-
son's best portraits, we must go either to Shak-
speare or to Cervantes.
But what shall we say of Addison's humour,
of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of
awakening that sense in others, and of drawing
mirth from incidents which occur every day,
and from little peculiarities of temper and man-
ner, such as may be found in every man ? We
feel the charm, we give ourselves up to it ; but
we strive in vain to analyze it.
LORD MACAULAY:
Life and Writings of Addison, July, 1843.
Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's
peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the
pleasantry of some other great satirists. The
three most eminent masters of the art of ridi-
cule, during the eighteenth century, were, we
conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which
of the three had the greatest power of moving
laughter may be questioned. But each of them,
within his own domain, was supreme.
Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merri-
ment is without disguise or restraint. He gam-
bols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points
the finger ; he turns up the nose ; he shoots out
the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very
opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never
joins in it. He appears in his works such as
he appeared in society. All the company are
convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the
author of all the mirth, preserves an invincible
gravity, and even sourness, of aspect, and gives
utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous
fancies with the air of a man reading the com-
mination service.
The manner of Addison is as remote from
that of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He
neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like
the Irish wit, throws a double portion of severity
into his countenance while laughing inwardly ;
but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look
of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch
sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible eleva-
tion of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of
the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack
Pudding or of a cynic ; it is that of a gentle-
man, in whom the quickest sense of the ridicu-
lous is constantly tempered by good nature and
good breeding.
We own that the humour of Addison is, in
our opinion, of a more delicious flavour than
the humour of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus
much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and
Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and
that no man has yet been able to mimic Addi-
son. The letter of the Abb6 Coyer to Pan-
sophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during
a long time, on the Academicians of Paris.
There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical works
which we, at least, cannot distinguish from
Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent
men who have made Addison their model,
though several have copied his mere diction
with happy effect, none has been able to catch
the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, in the
Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger,
there are numerous papers written in obvious
imitation of his Tatlers and Spectators. Most
of those papers have some merit; many are
very lively and amusing; but there is not a
single one which could be passed off as Addi-
son's on a critic of the smallest perspicacity.
LORD MACAULAY: Addison.
But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison
from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the
other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the
nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even
in his merriment. Severity, gradually harden-
ing and darkening into misanthropy, character-
izes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire
was, indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated
nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor
in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the
Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of
the grave, could he see anything but subjects
for drollery. The more solemn and august the
theme, the more monkeylike was his grimacing
and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth
of Mephistopheles; the mirth of Voltaire is the
mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly im-
agined, a portion of the happiness of seraphim
and just men made perfect be derived from an
exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth
must surely be none other than the mirth of
Addison ; a mirth consistent with tender com-
passion for all that is frail, and with profound
reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing great,
nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of
natural or revealed religion, has ever been asso-
ciated by Addison with any degrading idea. His
humanity is without a parallel in literary history.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess bound-
less power without abusing it. No kind of
power is more formidable than the power of
making men ridiculous; and that power Ad
dison possessed in boundless measure. Ho*
grossly that power was abused by Swift and by
Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may
be confidently affirmed that he has blackened no
man's character, nay, that it would be difficult
if not impossible, to find in all the volumes
which he has left us a single taunt which can
be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had
detractors whose malignity might have seemed
to justify as terrible a revenge as that which
men not superior to him in genius wreaked on
Beltesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He
ADDISON, JOSEPH.
was a politician ; he was the best writer of his
party; he lived in times of fierce excitement,
in times when persons of high character and
station stooped to scurrility such as is now prac-
tised only by the basest of mankind. Yet no
provocation and no example could induce him
to return railing for railing.
LORD MACAULAY : Addison.
Of the service which his Essays rendered to
morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It
is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that age
of outrageous profaneness and licentiousness
which followed the Restoration had passed
away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres
into something which, compared with the ex-
cesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be
called decency. Yet there still lingered in the
public mind a pernicious notion that there was
some connection between genius and profligacy,
between the domestic virtues and the sullen
formality of the Puritans. That error it is the
glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught
the nation that the faith and _ the morality of
Hale and Tillotson might be found in company
with wit more sparkling than the wit of Con-
greve, and with humour richer than the humour
of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did he
retort on vice the mockery which had recently
been directed against virtue, that, since his time,
the open violation of decency has always been
considered among us as the mark of a fool.
And this revolution, the greatest and most salu-
tary ever effected by any satirist, he accom-
plished, be it remembered, without writing one
personal lampoon.
In the early contributions of Addison to the
Tatler his peculiar powers were not fully exhib-
ited. Yet, from the first, his superiority to all
his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later
Tatlers are full}' equal to anything that he ever
wrote. Among the portraits we most admire
Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Up-
holsterer. The proceedings of the Court of
Honour, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story
of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of the Shil-
ling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious
and lively species of fiction in which Addison
excelled all men. There is one still better paper
of the same class. But though that paper, a
hundred and thirty-three years ago, was proba-
bly thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's
sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeam-
ish readers of the nineteenth century.
LORD MACAULAY : Addison.
We say this of Addison alone ; for Addison
is th;: Spectator. About three-sevenths of the
works are his ; and it is no exaggeration to say
that his worst essay is as good as the best essay
of any of his coadjutors. His best essays ap-
proach near to absolute perfection; nor is their
excellence more wonderful than their variety.
His invention never seems to flag; nor is he
ever under the necessity of repeating himself,
or of wearing out a subject. There are no
dregs in his wine. He regales us after the
fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that
there was.only one good glass in a bottle. As
soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam
of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught
of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we
have an allegory as lively and ingenious as Lu-
cian's Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday, an East-
ern apologue as richly coloured as the Tales of
Scherezade; on the Wednesday, a character de-
scribed with the skill of La Bruyere ; on the
Thursday, a scene from common life equal to
the best chapters in the Vicar of Wakefield ; on
the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on
fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet-
shows; and on the Saturday, a religious med ; -
tation which will bear a comparison with th.t
finest passages in Massillon.
It is dangerous to select where there is so
much that deserves the highest praise. We will
venture, however, to say that any person who
wishes to form a just notion of the extent and
variety of Addison's powers will do well to
read at one sitting the following papers: the
two Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Ex-
change, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the
Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pug
the Monkey, and the Death of Sir Roger de
Coverley.
The least valuable of Addison's contributions
to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age,
his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are
always luminous, and often ingenious. The
very worst of them must be regarded as credit-
able to him, when the character of the school
in which he had been trained is fairly consid-
ered. The best of them were much too good
for his readers. In truth, he was not so far
behind our generation as he was before his own.
No essays in the Spectator were more censured
and derided than those in which he raised his
voice against the contempt with which our fine
old ballads were regarded, and showed the
scoffers that the same gold which, burnished
and polished, gives lustre to the ^ineid and the
Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude dross
of Chevy Chace.
LORD MACAULAY: Addison.
The last moments of Addison were perfectly
serene. His interview with his son-in-law is
universally known. "See," he said, "how a
Christian can die !" The piety of Addison was,
in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The
feeling which predominates in all his devotional
writings is gratitude. God was to him the all-
wise and all-powerful friend who had watched
over his cradle -vith more than maternal tender-
ness ; who had Ii>tened to his cries before they
could form themselves in prayer; who had pre-
served his youth from the snares of vice; who
had made his cup run over with worldly bless-
ings ; who had doubled the value of those bless-
ings by besto\\ing a thankful heart to enjoy
them and dear friends to partake them ; who
had rebuked the waves of the Ligurian gulf, had
purified the autumnal air of the Campagna, and
had restrained the avalanches of Mount Cenis.
Of the Psalms, his favourite was that which
iS
AD MIR A TION.AD VERSITY.AD VER TISEMENTS.
represents the Ruler of all things under the
endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook
guides the flock safe through gloomy and deso-
late glens, to meadows well watered and rich
with herbage. On that goodness to which he
ascribed all the happiness of his life he relied in
the hour of death with the love which casteth
out fear. LORD MACAULAY : Addison.
ADMIRATION.
Admiration is a short-lived passion, that im-
mediately decays upon growing familiar with its
object, unless it be still fed with fresh discov-
eries. ADDISON.
All things are admired either because they
are new or because they are great.
LORD BACON.
The passions always move, and therefore
(consequently) please : for without motion there
can be no delight ; which cannot be considered
but as an active passion. When we view those
elevated ideas of nature, the result of that view
is admiration, which is always the cause of
pleasure. DRYDEN.
There is a pleasure in admiration ; and this
is that which properly causeth admiration : when
we discover a great deal in an object which we
understand to be excellent, and yet we see (we
know not how much) more beyond that, which
our understandings cannot fully reach and com-
prehend. TILLOTSON.
ADVERSITY.
A remembrance of the good use he had made
of prosperity contributed to support his mind
under the heavy weight of adversity which
then lay upon him. ATTERBURY.
He that has never known adversity is but
half acquainted with others, or with himself.
Constant success shows us but one side of the
world. For, as it surrounds us with friends,
who will tell us only our merits, so it silences
those enemies from whom alone we can learn
our defects. COLTON : Lacon.
In the struggles of ambition, in violent com-
petitions for power or for glory, how slender the
partition between the widest extremes of fortune,
and how few the steps and apparently slight the
circumstances which sever the throne from the
prison, the palace from the tomb ! So l^ibni
died, says the sacred historian, with inimitable
simplicity, and Omri reigned.
ROBERT HALL:
Sermon for the Princess Charlotte.
Concerning deliverance itself from all ad-
versity we use not to say, " Men are in adver-
sity," whensoever they feel any small hindrance
of their welfare in this world ; but when some
notable affliction or cross, some great calamity
or trouble, befalleth them. HOOKER.
Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from oui
impatience. BISHOP HORNE.
As adversity leads us to think properly of our
state, it is most beneficial to us.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
All is well as long as the sun shines and the
fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own
purposes. But if you will try the excellency
and feel the work of faith, place the man in a
persecution; let him ride in a storm; let his
bones be broken with sorrow, and his eyelid?
loosed with sickness; let his bread he dipped
with tears, and all the daughters of music be
brought low ; let us come to sit upon the mar-
gin of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard
upon our fortunes and dwell upon our wrong;
let the storm arise, and the keels toss till the
cordage crack, or that all our hopes bulge under
us, and descend into the hollowness of sad
misfortunes. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Some kinds of adversity are chiefly of the
character of TRIALS and others of DISCIPLINE.
But Bacon does not advert to this difference,
rior say anything at all about the distinction
between discipline and trial ; which are quite
different in themselves, but often confounded
together. By " discipline" is to be understood
anything whether of the character of adver-
sity or not that has a direct tendency to produce
improvement, or to create some qualification
that did not exist before; and by trial, anything
that tends to ascertain what improvement has
been made, or what qualities exist. Both effects
may be produced at once ; but what we speak
of is, the proper character of trial, as such, ar. 1
of discipline, as such.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Adversity.
ADVERTISEMENTS.
But, to consider this subject in its most ridicu-
lous lights, advertisements are of great use to
the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments
of ambition. A man that is by no means big
enough for the Gazette may easily creep into
the advertisements; by which means we often
see an apothecary in the same paper of news
with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman
with an ambassador. An advertisement from
Piccadilly goes down to posterity with an article
from Madrid, and John Bartlett of Goodman's-
fields is celebrated in the same paper with the
Emperor of Germany. Thus the fable tells us
that the wren mounted as high as the eagle, by
getting upon his back.
ADDISON : Taller, No. 224.
The advertisements which appear in a public
journal take rark among the most significant
indications of the state of society of that time
and place. The wants, the wishes, the means,
the employments, the books, the amusements,
the medicines, the trade, the economy o f do-
ADVICE.
nestic households, the organization of wealthy
establishments, the relation between masters
and servants, the wages paid to workmen, the
rents paid for houses, the prices charged for
commodities, the facilities afforded for travel-
ling, the materials and fashions for dress,
the furniture and adornments of houses, the
varieties and systems of schools:, the appearance
and traffic of towns, all receive illustration from
such sources. It would be possible to write a
very good social history of England during the
last two centuries from the information fur-
nished by advertisements alone.
Household Words.
ADVICE.
The truth of it is, a woman seldom asks ad-
vice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
When she has made her own choice, for form's
sake she sends a conge d'elire to her friends.
If we look into the secret springs and motives
that set people at work on these occasions, and
put them upon asking advice which they never
intend to take, I look upon it to be none of the
least, that they are incapable of keeping a
secret which is so very pleasing to them. A girl
longs to tell her confidante that she hopes to be
married in a little time ; and, in order to talk
of the pretty fellow that dwells so much in her
thoughts, asks her very gravely what she would
advise her to do in a case of so much difficulty.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 475.
There is nothing which we receive with so
much reluctance as advice. We look upon the
man who gives it us as offering an affront to
our understanding, and treating us like children
or idiots. We consider the instruction as an
implicit censure, and the zeal which any one
shows for our good on such an occasion as a
)iece of presumption or impertinence. The
.ith of it is, the person who pretends to advise
Iocs, in that particular, exercise a superiority
over us, and can have no other reason for it but
that, in comparing us with himself, he thinks us
defective either in our conduct or our under-
standing. For these reasons, there is nothing
difficult as the art of making advice agree-
)le ; and indeed all the writers, both ancient
id modern, have distinguished themselves
long one another according to the perfection
which they have arrived in this art. How
many devices have been made use of to render
this bitter potion palatable ! Some convey their
instructions to us in the best chosen words,
others in the most harmonious numbers ; some
in points of wit, and others in short proverbs.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 512.
Counsel is of two sorts ; the one concerning
lanners, the other concerning business : for the
t, the best preservative to keep the mind in
icalth is the faithful admonition of a friend.
The calling of a man's self to a strict account
is a medicine sometimes too piercing and cor-
rosive; reading good books of morality is a
little flat and dead ; observing our faults in
others is sometimes improper for our case ; but
the best receipt (best, I say, to work and best to
take) is the admonition of a friend. It is a
strange thing to behold what gross errors ar. d
extreme absurdities many (especially of the
greater sort) do commit for want of a friend to
tell them of them, to the great damage both of
their fame and fortune.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXVIII. : Of Friendship.
To take advice of some few friends is ever
honourable ; for lookers-on many times see more
than gamesters ; and the vale best discovereth
the hill. There is little friendship in the world,
and least of all between equals, which was wont
to be magnified. That that is, is between su-
perior and inferior, whose fortunes may com-
prehend the one the other.
LORD BACON: Essay L.: Of Suitors.
Whoever is wise, is apt to suspect and be
diffident of himself, and upon that account is
willing to "hearken unto counsel;" whereas
the foolish man, being in proportion to his folly
full of himself, and swallowed up in conceit,
will seldom take any counsel but his own, and
for that very reason because it is his own.
J. BALGUY.
Advice, however earnestly sought, however
ardently solicited, if it does not coincide with
a man's own opinions, if it tends only to inves-
tigate the improprieties, to correct the criminal
excesses of his conduct, to dissuade from a
continuance and to recommend a reformation
of his errors, seldom answers any other purpose
than to put him out of humour with himself,
and to alienate his affections from the adviser.
RT. HON. GEORGE CANNING :
Microcosm, No. 18.
We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
COLTON : Lacon.
It is always safe to learn, even from our ene-
mies seldom safe to instruct, even our friends.
COLTON : Lacon.
Good counsels observed, are chains to grace,
which neglected, prove halters to strange un-
dutiful children. T. FULLER.
It is by no means necessary to imagine that
he who is offended at advice was ignorant of
the fault, and resents the admonition as a false
charge ; for perhaps it is most natural to be en-
raged when there is the strongest conviction of
our own guilt. While we can easily defend our
character, we are no more disturbed by an accusa-
tion than we are alarmed by an enemy whom we
are sure to conquer, and whose attack, therefore,
wilt bring us honour without danger. But when a
man feels the reprehension of a friend seconded
by his own heart, he is easily heated into re-
sentment and revenge, either because he hoped
that the fault of which he was conscious had
escaped the notice of others; or that his friend
20
AD VICE. AFFE CTA TION. A FEE CTIONS.
had looked upon it with tenderness and extenu-
ation, and excused it for the sake of his other
virtues; or had considered him as too wise to
need advice, or too delicate to be shocked with
reproach ; or, because we cannot feel without
pain these reflections roused, which we have
been endeavouring to lay asleep; and when
pain has produced anger, who would not will-
ingly believe that it ought to be discharged on
others, rather than himself?
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 40.
People are sooner reclaimed by the side-wind
of a surprise than by downright admonition.
L' ESTRANGE.
A man takes contradiction and advice much
more easily than people think, only he will not
bear it when violently given, even though it be
well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain
open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in
the violent down-pour of rain. RICHTER.
Let no man presume to give advice to others
that has not first given good counsel to himself.
SENECA.
If you would convince a person of his mis-
takes, accost him not upon that subject when his
spirit is ruffled. DR. I. WATTS.
AFFECTATION.
Among the numerous stratagems by which
pride endeavours to recommend folly to regard,
there is scarcely one that meets with less success
than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real
character by fictitious appearances ; whether it
be, that every man hates falsehood, from the
natural congruity of truth to his faculties of
reason, or that every man is jealous of the hon-
our of his understanding, and thinks his dis-
.cernment consequentially called in question,
whenever anything is exhibited under a bor-
rowed form.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 20.
Affectation is an awkward and forced imita-
tion of what should be genuine and easy, want-
ing the beauty that accompanies what is natural.
LOCKE.
Affectation endeavours to correct natural de-
fects, and has always the laudable aim of
rleasing, though it always misses it.
LOCKE.
When our consciousness turns upon the main
Jesign of life, and our thoughts are employed
upon the chief purpose either in business or
pleasure, we shall never betray an affectation,
for we cannot be guilty of it ; but when we
give the passion for praise an unbridled liberty,
pur pleasure in little perfections robs us of what
is due to us for great virtues and worthy quali-
ties. How many excellent speeches and honest
RCtions are lost for want of being indifferent
where we ought !
SIR ,R. S.TtELE : Spectator, No. 38.
The wild havoc affectation makes in that part
of the world which should be most polite, is
visible wherever we turn our eyes ; it pushes
men not only into impertinences in conversa-
tion, but also in their premeditated speeches.
At the bar it torments the bench, whose business
it is to cut off all superfluities in what is spoken
before it by the practitioner ; as well as several
little pieces of injustice which arise from the
law itself. I have seen it make a man run frorr
the purpose before a judge who was, when at
the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader,
that, with all the pomp of eloquence in his
power, he never spoke a word too much.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectaior,No. 38.
AFFECTIONS.
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate
the affections, but to regulate them.
ADDISON.
A resemblance of humour and opinion, a
fancy for the same business or diversion, is a
ground of affection. JEREMY COLLIER.
The successes of intellectual effort are never
so great as when aided by the affections that
animate social converse.
JOHN FOSTER : Journal,
All things being double-handed, and having
the appearances both of truth and falsehood,
where our affections have engaged us we attend
only to the former. GLANVILL : Scepsis.
We read of a " joy unspeakable and full of
glory," of " a peace that passeth all understand-
ing," with innumerable other expressions of a
similar kind, which indicate strong and ve-
hement emotions of mind. That the great ob-
jects of Christianity, called eternity, heaven,
and hell, are of sufficient magnitude to justify
vivid emotions of joy, fear, and love, is indis-
putable, if it be allowed we have any relation
to them; nor is it less certain that religion
could never have any powerful influence if it
did not influence through the medium of the
affections. All objects which have any perma-
nent influence influence the conduct in this way.
We may possibly be first set in motion by their
supposed connection with our interest; but
unless they draw to themselves* particular affec-
tions the pursuit soon terminates.
ROHERT HALL :
Fragment on tJu Right of Worship.
Affections (as joy, grief, fear, and acger, with
such like), being, as it were, the sundry fashions
and forms of appetite, can neither rise at the
conceit of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose
but rise at the sight of some things.
HOOKER: Eccles. Pol., Book 1.
Be it never so true which we teach the world
to believe, yet if once their affections begin to
be alienated a small thing persuadeth them to
change their opinions. HOOKER.
AFFECTIONS. AFFLICTION.
21
Affection is still a briber \)f the judgment;
and it is hard for a man to admit a reason
against the thing he loves, or to confess the
force of an argument against an interest.
SOUTH.
The only thing which can endear religion to
your practice will be to raise your affections
above this world. WAKE.
AFFLICTION.
In afflictions men generally draw their con-
lolations out of books of morality, which indeed
are of great use to fortify and strengthen the
mind against the impressions of sorrow. Mon-
sieur St. Evremont, who does not approve of
this method, recommends authors who are apt
to stir up mirth in the minds of the readers, and
fancies Don Quixote can give more relief to a
heavy heart than Plutarch or Seneca, as it is
much easier to divert grief than to conquer it.
This doubtless may have its effects on some
tempers. I should rather have recourse to
authors of a quite contrary kind, that give us
instances of calamities and misfortunes and
show human nature in its greatest distresses.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 163.
Make the true use of those afflictions which
his hand, mercifully severe, hath been pleased
to lay upon thee. ATTERBURY.
Though it be not in our power to make
affliction no affliction, yet it is in our power to
take off the edge of it, by a steady view of those
divine joys prepared for us in another state.
ATTERBURY.
Our Saviour is represented everywhere in
Scripture as the special patron of the poor and
afflicted. ATTERBURY.
Can any man trust a better support under
affliction than the friendship of Omnipotence,
who is both able and willing, and knows how,
to relieve him ? BENTLEY.
The furnace of affliction refines us from
earthly dressiness, and softens us for the impres-
sion of God's own stamp. BOYLE.
But calamity is, unhappily, the usual season
of reflection ; and the pride of men will not
often suffer reason to have any scope until it
can be no longer of service.
BURKE :
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,
April 3, 1777.
Great distress has never hitherto taught, and
Trhilst the world lasts it never will teach, wise
lessons to any part of mankind. Men are as
much blinded by the extremes of misery as by
the extremes of prosperity.
BURKE:
Letter to a Member of the National
Assembly, 1791.
Afflictions sent by Providence melt the con-
stancy of the noble-minded, but confirm the
obduracy of the vile. The same furnace that
hardens clay liquefies gold; and in the strong
manifestations of divine power Pharaoh found
his punishment, but David his pardon.
COLTON : Lacon.
How naturally does affliction make us Chris
tians! and how impossible is it when all human
help is vain, and the whole earth too poor and
trifling to furnish us with one moment's peace,
how impossible is it then to avoid looking at
the gospel ! COWPER
Letter to Lady Hesketh, July 4, 1765.
How every hostile feeling becomes mitigated
into something like kindness, when its object,
perhaps lately proud, assuming, unjust, is now
seen oppressed into dejection by calamity J
The most cruel wild beast, or more cruel man,
if seen" languishing in death and raising to-
wards us a feeble and supplicating look, would
certainly move our pity.
JOHN FOSTER: Journal.
There is a certain equanimity in those who
are good and just which runs into their very
sorrow and disappoints the force of it. Though
they must pass through afflictions in common
with all who are in human nature, yet their
conscious integrity shall undermine their afflic-
tion ; nay, that very affliction shall add force to
their integrity, from a reflection of the use of
virtue in the hour of affliction.
FRANCHAM : Spectator, No. 520.
A consideration of the benefit of afflictions
should teach us to bear them patiently when
they fall to our lot, and to be thankful to
Heaven for having planted such barriers around
us, to restrain the exuberance of our follies and
our crimes.
Let these sacred fences be removed ; exempt
the ambitious from disappointment and the
guilty from remorse; let luxury go unattended
with disease, and indiscretion lead fnto no em-
barrassments or distresses ; our vices would
range without control, and the impetuosity of
our passions have no bounds; every family
would be filled with strife, every nation with
carnage, and a deluge of calamities would break
in upon us which would produce more misery
in a year than is inflicted by the hand of Provi-
dence in a lapse of ages.
ROBERT &KVLI Character of Cleandc~.
The time of sickness or affliction is like the
cool of the day to Adam, a season of peculiar
propriety for the voice of God to be heard ; and
may be improved into a very advantageous
opportunity of begetting or increasing spiritual
life. HAMMOND.
The minds of the afflicted do never think
they have fully conceived the weight or measure
of their own woe : they use their affection as a
whetstone both to wit and memory.
HOOKER.
22
AFFLICTION.
Little minds are amed and subdued by mis-
fortune; but great minds rise above it.
WASHINGTON IRVING.
As daily experience makes it evident that
misfortunes are unavoidably incident to human
life, that calamity will neither be repelled by
fortitude, nor escaped by flight; neither awed
by greatness, nor eluded by obscurity ; philoso-
phers have endeavoured to reconcile us to that
condition which they cannot teach us to merit,
by persuading us that most of our evils are
made afflictive only by ignorance or perverse-
ness, and that nature has annexed to every
vicissitude of external circumstances some ad-
vantage sufficient to over-balance all its incon-
veniences. DR. S. JOHNSON.
It is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man
is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed on a
better state. Prosperity, alloyed and imperfect
as it is, has power to intoxicate the imagination,
to fix the mind upon the present scene, to pro-
duce confidence and elation, and to make him
who enjoys affluence and honours forget the
hand by which they were bestowed. It is sel-
dom that we are otherwise than by affliction
awakened to a sense of our imbecility, or taught
to know how little all our acquisitions can con-
duce to safety or to quiet, and how justly we
may ascribe to the superintendence of a higher
power those blessings which in the wantonness
of success we considered as the attainments of
our policy or courage. DR. S. JOHNSON.
When any calamity has been suffered, the
first thing to be remembered is, how much has
been escaped. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Upon the upshot, afflictions are the methods
of a merciful Providence^ to force us upon the
only means of settling matters right.
L ESTRANGE.
The willow which bends to the tempest often
escapes better than the oak which resists it;
and so in great calamities it sometimes happens
that light and frivolous spirits recover their
elasticity and presence of mind sooner than
those of a loftier character.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The sinner's conscience is the best expositor
of the mind of God, under any judgment or
affliction. SOUTH.
It is a very melancholy reflection, that men
me usually so weak that it is absolutely neces-
sary for them to know sorrow and pain, to be in
their right senses. Prosperous people (for happy
there are none) are hurried away with a fond
sense of their present condition, and thought-
less of the mutability of fortune. Fortune is a
term which we must use, in such discourses as
these, for what is wrought by the unseen hand
of the Disposer of all things. But methinks
the disposition of a mind which is truly great
is that which makes misfortunes and sorrows
little when they befall ourselves, great and la-
mentable when they befall other men. The
most unpardonable malefactor in the world
going to his death and bearing it with com-
posure would win the pity of those who should
behold him; and this not because his calamity
is deplorable, but because he seems himself not
to deplore it. We suffer for him who is less
sensible of his own misery, and are inclined to
despise him who sinks under the weight of his
distresses.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 312.
Before an affliction is digested, consolation
ever comes too soon ; and after it is digested, it
comes too late ; but there is a mark between
these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a com-
forter to take aim at. STERNE.
When a storm of sad mischance beats upon
our spirits, turn it into advantage, to serve re-
ligion or prudence. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Sad accidents, and a state of' affliction, is a
school of virtue : it corrects levity, and inter-
rupts the confidence of sinning.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
That which thou dost not understand when
thou readest, thou shall understand in the day
of thy visitation. For many secrets of religion
are not perceived till they be felt, and are not
felt but in the day of a great calamity.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Religion directs us rather to secure inward
peace than outward ease, to be more careful to
avoid everlasting torment than light afflictions.
TlLLOTSON.
Others have sought to ease themselves of all
the evil of affliction by disputing subtilely against
it, and pertinaciously maintaining that afflictions
are no real evils, but only in imagination.
TlLLOTSON.
Though all afflictions are evils in themselves,
yet they are good for us, because they discover
to us our disease and tend to our cure.
TlLLOTSON.
God will make these evils the occasion of
greater good, by turning them to advantage in
this world, or increase of our happiness in the
next. TILLOTSON.
None of us fall into those circumstances of
danger, want, or pain, that can have hopes of
relief but from God alone; none in all the
world to flee to but him. TILLOTSON.
All men naturally fly to God in extremity,
and the most atheistical person in the world,
when forsaken of all hopes of any other relief,
is forced to acknowledge him. TILLOTSON.
It is our great unhappiness, when any calami-
ties fall upon us, that we are uneasy and dissatis-
fied. WAKE.
Let us not mistake God 's goodness, noi
imagine because he smiles us, that we are for-
saken of him. WAKE.
AFFLICTION. A GE.
If we repent seriously, submit contentedly,
and serve htm faithfully, afflictions shall turn to
our advantage. WAKE.
It is quite possible either to improve or fail to
improve either kind of affliction.
WHATELY.
AGE.
The instances of longevity are chiefly among
the abstemious. Abstinence in extremity will
prove a mortal disease ; but the experiments of
it are very rare. ARBUTHNOT : On Aliments.
A recovery in my case and at my age is im-
possible : the kindest wish of my friends is
euthanasia. ARBUTHNOT.
One's age should be tranquil, as one's child-
hood should be playful ; hard work at either
extremity of human existence seems to me out
of place : the morning and the evening should
be alike cool and peaceful ; at mid- day the sun
may burn, and men may labour under it.
DR. T. ARNOLD.
Age makes us most fondly hug and retain the
good things of this life, when we have the least
prospect of enjoying them. ATTERBURY.
Men of age object too much, consult too long,
adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom
drive business home to the full period, but con-
tent themselves with a mediocrity of success.
Certainly it is good to compound employments
of both ; for that will be good for the present,
because the virtues of either age may correct
the defects of both; and good for succession,
that young men may be learners, while men in
age are actors; and, lastly, good for external
accidents, because authority followeth old men,
and favour and popularity yo.uth : but for the
moral part, perhaps, youth will have the pre-
eminence, as age hath for the politic.
LORD BACON :
Essay XLIII. : Of Youth and Age.
Cicero was at dinner, when an ancient lady
said she was but forty : one that sat by rounded
him in the ear, She is far more, out of the
question. Cicero answered, I must believe her,
for I have heard her say so any time these ten
years. LORD BACON.
Old men who have loved young company,
and been conversant continually with them,
have been of long life. LORD BACON.
The ancient sophists and rhetoricians, who
had young auditors, lived till they were an hun-
dred years old ; and so likewise did many of the
grammarians and schoolmasters, as Qrbilius.
LORD BACON.
We are so far from repining at God that he
hath not extended the period of our lives to the
longevity of the antediluvians, that we give him
thanks for contracting the clays of our trial, and
receiving us more menu \ly into those everlasting
habitations abo 1
BENTLEY.
Throughout the whole vegetable, sensible, and
rational world, whatever makes progress towards
maturity, as soon as it has passed that point,
begins to verge towards decay. BLAIR.
A joyless and dreary season will old age prove,
if we arrive at it with an unimproved or cor-
rupted mind. For this period, as for everything,
certain preparation is necessary ; and that prep-
aration consists in the acquisition of knowledge,
friends, and virtue. Then is the time when a
man would especially wish to find himself sui-
rounded by those who love and respect him,--
who will bear with his infirmities, relieve him
of his labours, and cheer him with their society.
Let him, therefore, now in the summer of his
days, while yet active and flourishing, by acts of
seasonable kindness and benevolence insure
that love, and by upright and honourable con-
duct lay the foundation for that respect which
in old age he would wish to enjoy. In the last
place, let him consider a good conscience, peace
with God, and the hope of heaven, as the most
effectual consolations he can possess when the
evil days shall come. BLAIR : Lectures.
We are both in the decline of life, my deal
dean, and have been some years going down the
hill : let us make the passage as smooth as we
can. Let us fence against physical evil by care,
and the use of those means which experience
must have pointed out to us; let us fence against
moral evil by philosophy. We may, nay (if we
will follow nature and do not work up imagina-
tion against her plainest dictates) we shall, of
course, grow every year more indifferent to life,
and to the affairs and interests of a system out
of which we are soon to go. This is much better
than stupidity. The decay of passion strength-
ens philosophy ; for passion may decay and stu-
pidity not succeed. Passions (says Pope, our
divine, as you will see one time or other) are
the gales of life; let us not complain that they
do not blow a storm. What hurt does age do
us in subduing what we toil to subdue all our
lives? It is now six in the morning; I recall
the time (and am glad it is over) when about
this hour I used to be going to bed, surfeited
with pleasure or jaded with business ; my head
often full of schemes, and my heart as often full
of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that
I rise at this hour refreshed, serene, and calm ;
that the past and even the piesent affairs of life
stand like objects at a distance from me, where
I can keep off the disagreeable, so as not to 1 c
strongly affected by them, and from whence I
can draw the others nearer to me ? Passions, in
their force, would bring all these, nay, even
future contingencies, about my ears at once, anJ
reason would ill defend me in the scuffle.
LORD BOLINGBROKE:
Letter to Dean Swift.
The failure of the mind in old age is often
less the result of natural decay than of disease.
Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment
brings indolence; indolence, decay of mental
power, enmii, and sometimes death. Men have
*4
AGE.
been known to die, literally speaking, of disease
induced by intellectual vacuity.
SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE.
The choleric fall short of the longevity of the
sanguine. SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
Old men do most exceed in this point of folly,
commending the days of their youth they scarce
remembered, at least well understood not.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE : Vulgar Errors.
We are generally so much pleased with any
lifC3 accomplishments, 'either of body or mind,
wlv.ch have once made us remarkable in the
world, that we endeavour to persuade ourselves
; t is not in the power of time to rob us of them.
We are eternally pursuing the same method;
which first procured us the applauses of man-
kind. It is from this notion that an author
writes on, though he is come to dotage; with-
out ever considering that his memory is im-
paired, and that he hath lost that life, and those
spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired
his imagination. The same folly hinders a man
from submitting his behaviour to his age, and
makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at
five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet,
though he is past threescore. It is this, in a
word, which fills the town with elderly fops and
superannuated coquettes.
BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 301.
No man lives too long who lives to do with
spirit and suffer with resignation what Provi-
dence pleases to command or inflict; but, in-
deed, they are sharp commodities which beset
old age. BURKE:
Letter to a Noble Lord on the Attacks
upon his Pension, 1796.
A man of great sagacity in business, and he
preserved so great a vigour of mind even to his
death, when near eighty, that some who had
known him in his younger years did believe
him to have much quicker parts in his age than
before. EARL OF CLARENDON.
Providence gives us notice by sensible de-
clensions, that we may disengage from the
world by degrees. JEREMY COLLIER.
It would be well if old age diminished our
perceptibilities to pain in the same proportion
that it does our sensibilities to pleasure ; and if
life has been termed a feast, those favoured few
are the most fortunate guests who are not com-
pelled to sit at the table when they can no
longer partake of the banquet. But the mis-
fortune is, that body and mind, like man and
wife, do not nlways agree to die together. It is
bad when the mind survives the body ; and
worse still when the body survives the mind ;
but when both these survive our spirits, our
hopes, and our health, this is worst. of all.
COLTON : Lacon.
The con'inual agitations of the spirits must
needs be a weakening of any constitution, es-
pecially in age : and many causes are required
for refreshment betwixt the heats. DRYDEN.
Sobriety in our riper years is the effect of \
well-concocted warmth ; but where the princi-
ples are only phlegm, what can be expected but
an insipid manhood and old infancy ?
DRYDEN.
Age oppresses us by the same degrees that it
instructs us, and permits not that our mortal
members, which are frozen with our years,
should retain the vigour of our youth.
DRYDEN.
From fifty to threescore he loses not much in
fancy; and judgment, the effect of observation,
still increases. DRYDEN.
Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, in-
creases our desire of living. Those clangers
which, in the vigour of youth, we had learned
to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old.
Our caution increasing as our years increase,
fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of
the mind, and the small remainder of life is
taken up in useless efforts to keep off" our end,
or provide for a continued existence. . . .
Whence, then, is this increased love of life,
which grows upon us with our years? whence
comes it that we thus make greater efforts to
preserve our existence at a period when it be-
comes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that
nature, attentive to the preservation of man-
kind, increases our wishes to live, while she
lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the
senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in
the spoil ? Life would be insupportable to an
old man who, loaded with infirmities, feared
death no more than when in the vigour of man-
hood : the numberless calamities of decaying
nature, and the consciousness of surviving every
pleasure, would at once induce him with his
own hand to terminate the scene of misery : but
happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a
time when it coul'd only be prejudicial, and life
acquires an imaginary value in proportion as its
real value is no more. GOLDSMITH :
Essays, No. XIV.; also in Citizen of the
World, Letter LXXIII.
What can be a more pitiable object than de-
crepitude sinking under the accumulated load of
years and of penury? Arrived at that period
when the most fortunate confess they have no
pleasure, how forlorn is his situation who, des-
titute of the means of subsistence, has survived
his last child or his last friend ! Solitary and
neglected, without comfort and without hope,
depending for everything on a kindness he has
no means of conciliating, he finds himself left
alone in a world to which he has ceased to
belong, and is only felt in society as a burden it
is impatient to shake off.
ROBERT HALL : Refections on War.
Wisdom and youth are seldom joined in one;
and the ordinary course of the world is more
according to Job's observation, who giveth men
advice to seek wisdom among the ancients, and
in the length of days understanding.
HOOKER.
AGE.
The time of life in which memory seems par-
ticularly to claim predominance over the other
faculties of the mind, is our declining age. It
has been remarked by former writers, that old
men are generally narrative, and fall easily into
recitals of past transactions, and accounts of
persons known to them in their youth. When
we approach the verge of the grave it is more
eminently true,
" Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longani.'
" Life's span forbids thee to extend thy caret
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years."
CREECH.
We have no longer any possibility of great
vicissitudes in our favour; the changes which
are to happen in the world will come too late
for our accommodation ; and those who have
no hope before them, and to whom their present
state is painful and irksome, must of necessity
turn their thoughts back to try what retrospect
will afford. It ought, therefore, to be the care of
those who wish to pass the last hours with com-
fort, to lay up such a treasure of pleasing ideas
as shall support the expenses of that time, which
is to depend wholly upon the fund already ac-
quired.
" Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,
Finem animo certum, miserisque viatica curis."
" Seek here, ye young, the anchor of your mind;
Here, suff 'ring age, a bless'd provision find."
ELPHINSTON.
In youth, however unhappy, we solace our-
selves with the hope of better fortune, and,
however vicious, appease our consciences with
intentions of repentance; but the time comes at
last in which life has no more to promise, in
which happiness can be drawn only from recol-
lection, and virtue will be all that we can recol-
lect with pleasure.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 41.
Another vice of age, by which the rising gen-
eration may be alienated from it, is severity and
censoriousness, that gives no allowance to the
failings of early life, that expects artfulness from
childhood, and constancy from youth, that is
peremptory in every command, and inexorable
in every failure. There are many who live
merely to hinder happiness, and whose descend-
ants can only tell of long life that it produces
suspicion, malignity, peevishness, and persecu-
tion ; and yet even these tyrants can talk of the
ingratitude of the age, curse their heirs for im-
patience, and wonder that young men cannot
take pleasure in their fathers' company.
He that would pass the latter part of life with
honour and decency must, when he is young,
consider that he shall one day be old; and
remember, when he is old, that he has once
been young. In youth he must lay up knowl-
edge for his support when his powers of act-
ing shall forsake him ; and in age forbear to
animadvert with rigour on faults which expe-
rience only can correct.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 50.
To secure to the old that influence which they
are willing to claim, and which might so much
contribute to the improvement of the arts of
life, it is absolutely necessary that they give
themsel"es up to the duties of declining years,
and coi tentedly resign to youth its levity, its
pleasures, its frolics, and its fopperies. It is a
hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of
spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the priv-
ileges of age and retain the playthings of child-
hood. The young always form magnificent ideas
of the wisdom and gravity of men, whom t'aey
consider placed at a distance from them in the
ranks of existence, and naturally look on those
whom they find trifling with long beards, with
contempt and indignation like that which women
feel at the effeminacy of men.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 50.
If it has been found by the experience of
mankind that not even the best seasons of life
are able to supply sufficient gratifications without
anticipating uncertain felicities, it cannot surely
be supposed that old age, worn with labours,
harassed with anxieties, and tortured with dis-
eases, should have any gladness of its own, or
feel any satisfaction from the contemplation of
the present. All the comfort that can now be
expected must be recalled from the past, or bor-
rowed from the future ; the past is very soon
exhausted, all the events or actions of which
the memory can afford pleasure are quickly
recollected; and the future lies beyond the
grave, where it can be reached only by virtue
and devotion.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 69.
An old Greek epigrammatist, intending to
show the miseries that attend the last stage of
man, imprecates upon those who are so^oolish
as to wish for long life, the calamity of contin-
uing to grow old from century to century. He
thought that no adventitious or foreign pain was
requisite, that decrepitude itself was an epitome
of whatever is dreadful, and nothing could be
added to the curse of age, but that it should be
extended beyond its natural limits.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 69.
Piety is the only proper and adeq'uate relief
of decaying man.' He that grows old without
religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility,
and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowd-
ing upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless
misery, in which every reflection must plunge
him deeper, and where he finds only new gra-
dations of anguish and precipices of horror.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 69.
That natural jealousy which makes every ma
unwilling to allow much excellence in another,
always produces a disposition to believe that the
mind grows old with the body, and that he
whom we are now forced to confess superior is
hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By
delighting to think this of the living, we learn
to think it of the dead. And Fenton, with all
his kindness to Waller, has the luck to mark
the exact time when his genius passed the
zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year.
This is to allot the mind but a small portion.
26
AGE.
Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon ;
but it seems not to be universal. Newton was in
his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, a
few days before his death ; and Waller appears
not, in my opinion, to have lost at eighty-two
any part of his poetical power.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Life of Waller.
To novelty, to acuteness of sensation, to hope,
to ardour of pursuit, succeeds what- is, in no in-
considerable degree, an equivalent for'them all,
" perception of ease." Herein is the exact differ-
ence between the young and the old. The young
are not happy but when enjoying pleasure; the
old are happy when free from pain. And this
constitution suits with the degrees of animal
power which they respectively possess. The
vigour of youth hasto be stimulated to action
by impatience of rest; whilst to the imbecility
of age, quietness and repose become positive
gratifications. In one important step the advan-
tage is with the old. A state of ease is, gener-
ally speaking, more attainable than a state of
pleasure. A constitution, therefore, which can
enjoy ease is preferable to that which can taste
only pleasure. This same perception of ease
oftentimes renders old age a condition of great
comfort, especially when riding at its anchor
after a busy or tempestuous life.
PALEY : Natural Theology.
Most men in years, as they are generally dis-
couragers of youth, are like old trees, which,
being past bearing themselves, will suffer no
young plants to flourish beneath them.
POPE.
I grieve with the old for so many additional
inconvftniences, more than their small remain
of life seemed destined to undergo. POPE.
Increase of years makes men more talkative,
but less writative, to that degree that I now
write no letters but of plain how d' ye's.
POPE : To Swift.
When men grow virtuous in their old age,
they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's
leavings. POPE :
Thoughts on Various Subjects.
A truly Christian man can look down like an
eternal sun upon the autumn of his existence:
the more sand has passed through the hour-glass
of life, the more clearly can he see through the
empty glass. Earth, too, is to him a beloved
spot, a beautiful meadow, the scene of his child-
hood's sports, and he hangs upon this mother of
our first life with the love with which a bride,
full of childhood's recollections, clings to a be-
loved mother's breast, the evening before the
day on which she resigns herself to the bride-
groom's heart. RICHTER.
Oh, this contentment shown by a man al-
though the sunset clouds of life were gathering
around him, inspires new life into the hypochon-
driacal spectator or listener, whose melancholy
minor chords usually, in the presence of an
old man, begin to viorate tremendously, as if he
were a sign-post to the grave ! But, in reality, A
cheerful, vigorous old man discloses to us the
immortality of his being : too tough to be mown
down even by death's keen scythe, and pointing
to us the way into the second world.
RICHTER.
The world is very bad as it is, so bad that
good men scarce know how to spend fifty 01
threescore years in it; but consider how bad it
would probably be were the life of man extended
to six, seven, or eight hundred years. If so
near a prospect of the other world as forty or
fifty years cannot restrain men from the greatest
villanies, what would they do if they could as
reasonably suppose death to be three or four
hundred years off? If men make such improve-
ments in wickedness in twenty or thirty years,
what would they do in hundreds ? And what
a blessed place then would this world be to
live in ! W. SH ERLOCK.
Age, which unavoidably is but one remove
from death, and consequently should have
nothing about it but what looks like a decent
preparation for it, scarce ever appears of late
days but in the high mode, the flaunting garb
and utmost gaudery of youth. SOUTH.
Those who by the prerogative of their age
should frown youth into sobriety imitate and
strike in with them, and are really vicious that
they may be thought young. SOUTH.
Let not men flatter themselves that though
they find it difficult at present to combat and
stand out against an ill practice, yet that old age
would do that for them which they in their
youth could never find in their hearts to do for
themselves. SOUTH.
The vices of old age have the stiffness of it
too ; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in,
so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found
much greater. SOUTH.
. Tiberius was bad enough in his youth ; but
superlatively and monstrously so in his old age.
SOUTH.
You once remarked to me how time strength-
ened family affections, and, indeed, all early
ones : one's feelings seem to be weary of trav-
elling, and like to rest at home. They who tell
me that men grow hard-hearted as they grow
older have a very limited view of this world
of ours. It is true with those whose views and
hopes are merely and vulgarly worldly ; but
when human nature is not perverted, time
strengthens our kindly feelings, and abates our
angry ones. SOUTHEV.
It is not in the heyday of health and enjoy-
ment, it is not in the morning sunshine of his
vernal day, that man can be expected feelingly
to remember his latter end, and to fix his heart
upon eternity. But in after-life many causes
operate to wean us from the world : grief softens
the heart; sickness searches it; the blossoms of
hope are shed ; death cuts down the flowers of
the affections; the disappointed man turns hif
AGE.
thoughts toward a state of existence where his
wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty
of faith ; the successful man feels that the
objects which he has ardently pursued fail to
satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the
wicked man turneth away from his wickedness,
that he may save his soul alive.
SOUTHEY.
It would be a good appendix to "The Art
of Living and Dying," if any one would write
u The Art of Growing Old," and teach men to
resign their pretensions to the pleasures and
gallantries of youth, in proportion to the altera-
tion they find in themselves by the approach of
Age and infirmities. The infirmities of this
stage of life would be much fewer, if we did
not affect those which attend the more vigorous
and active part of our days; but instead of
studying to be wiser, or being contented with
our present follies, the ambition of many of us
is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly
have been. I have often argued, as I am a
professed lover of women, that our sex grows
old with a much worse grace than the other
does ; and have ever been of opinion that there
are more well-pleased old women than old men.
I thought it a good reason for this, that the
ambition of the fair sex being confined to ad-
vantageous marriages, or shining in the eyes of
men, their parts were over sooner, and conse-
quently the errors in the performance of them.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 266.
As to all the rational and worthy pleasures
of our being, the conscience of a good fame,
the contemplation of another life, the respect
and commerce of honest men, our capacities
for such enjoyments are enlarged by years.
While health endures, the latter part of life, in
the eye of reason, is certainly the more eligible.
The memory of a well-spent youth gives a
peaceable, unmixed, and elegant pleasure to the
mind; and to such who are so unfortunate as
not to be able to look back on youth with satis-
faction they may give themselves no little con-
solation that they are under no temptation to
repeat the follies, and that they at present
despise them.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 153.
The nearer I find myself verging to that
period of life which is to be labour aiid sorrow,
the more I prop myself upon those few supports
that are left. SWIFT.
The troubles of age were intended ... to
wean us gradually from our fondness of life the
nearer we approach to the end. SWIFT.
Old women, and men too, . . . seek, as it
were, by Medea's charms, to recoct their corps,
as she ^Eson's, from feeble deformities to
sprightly handsomeness.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
\Vhat great thing soever a man proposed to
do in his life, he should think of achieving it
by fifty. SIR W. TEMPLE.
None that feels sensibly the decays of age,
and his life wearing off, can figure to himself
those imaginary charms in riches and praise,
that men are apt to do in the warmth of theii
blood. SIR W. TEMPLE.
Socrates used to say that it was pleasant to
grow old with good health and a good friend ;
and he might have reason : a man may be ccn-
tent to live while he is no trouble to himself or
his friends; but after that, it is hard if he be
not content to die. I knew and esteemed a
person abroad who used to say, a man must be
a mean wretch who desired to live after three-
score years old. But so much, I doubt, is cer-
tain, that in life, as in wine, he that will drink
it good must not draw it to the dregs. Where
this happens, one comfort of age may be, that
whereas younger men are usually in pain when-
ever they are not in pleasure, old men find a
sort of pleasure when they are out of pain ; and
as young men often lose or impair their present
enjoyments by craving after what is to come, by
vain hopes, or fruitless fears, so old men relieve
the wants of their age by pleasing reflections
upon what is past. Therefore, men in the
health and vigour of their age should endeavour
to fill their lives with reading, with travel, with
the best conversation and the worthiest actions,
either in public or private stations; that they
may have something agreeable left to feed on
when they are old, by pleasing remembrances.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
There is a strange difference in the ages at
which different persons acquire such maturity as
they are capable of, and at which some of those
who have greatly distinguished themselves have
done, and been, something remarkable. Some
of them have left the world at an earlier age
than that at which others have begun their
career of eminence. It was remarked to the
late Dr. Arnold by a friend, as a matter of
curiosity, that several men who have filled a
considerable page in history have lived but forty-
seven years (Philip of Macedon, Joseph Addi-
son, Sir William Jones, Nelson, Pitf), and he
was told in a jocular way to beware of the
forty-seventh year. He was at that time in
robust health; but he died at forty-seven!
Alexander died at thirty-two; Sir Stamford
Raffles at forty-five. Sir Isaac Newton did in-
deed live to a great age ; but it is said that all
his discoveries were made before he was forty ;
so that he might have died at that age and been
as celebrated as he is. On the other hand,
Herschel is said to have taken to astronomy at
forty-seven. Swedenborg, if he had died at
sixty, would have been remembered by those
that did remember him merely as a sensible
worthy man, and a very considerable mathe-
matician. The strange fancies which took
possession of him, and which survive in the
sect he founded, all came on after that age.
Some persons resemble certain trees, such as
the nut, which flowers in February, and ripens
its fruit in September; or the juniper and the
arbutus, which take a whole year or more to
28
AGE. ALCHEMY. ALLEGORIES.
perfect their fruit; and others the cherry, which
takes between two and three months.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon 's Essay, Of Youth and Age.
As for the decay of mental faculties which
often takes place in old age, every one is aware
of it ; but many overlook one kind of it which
is far from uncommon ; namely, when a man
of superior intelligence, without falling into any-
thing like dotage, sinks into an ordinary man.
Whenever there is a mixture of genius with
imbecility, every one perceives that a decay has
taken place. But when a person of great intel-
lectual eminence becomes (as is sometimes the
case) an ordinary average man, just such as many
have been all their life, no one is likely to sus-
pect that the faculties have been impaired by
age, except those who have seen much of him
in his brighter days.
Even so, no one on looking at an ordinaiy
dwelling-house in good repair would suspect
that it had been once a splendid palace ; but
when we view a stately old castle or cathedral
partly in ruins, we see at once that it cannot be
what it originally was.
The decay which is most usually noticed in
old people, both by others and by themselves, is
a decay in memory. But this is perhaps partly
from its being a defect easily to be detected and
distinctly proved. When a decay of judgment
takes place which is perhaps oftener the case
than is commonly supposed the party himself
is not likely to be conscious of it ; and his friends
are more likely to overlook it, and, even when
they do perceive it, to be backward in giving
him warning, for fear of being met with such a
rebuff as Gil Bias received in return for his
candour from the Archbishop, his patron.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacoti's Essay, Of Youth and Age.
Of persons who have led a temperate life,
those will have the best chance of longevity who
have done hardly anything else but live; what
may be called the neuter verbs not active or
passive, but only being : who have had little to
do, little to suffer, but have led a life of quiet
retirement, without exertion of body or mind
avoiding all troublesome enterprise, and seek-
ing only a comfortable obscurity. Such men, if
of a pretty strong constitution, and if they escape
any remarkable calamities, are likely to live
long. But much affliction, or much exertion,
and, still more, both combined, will be sure to
tell upon the constitution if not at once, yet at
least as years advance. One who is of the char-
acter of an active or passive verb, or, still more,
both combined, though he may be said to have
lived long in everything but years, will rarely
reach the age of the neuters.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Regimen of Health.
When the pulse beats high, and we are flushed
with youth, and health, and vigour; when all
goes on prosperously, and success seems almost
to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the
want of the consolations of religion : but when
fortune frowns, or friends forsake us ; when sor-
row, or sickness, or old age comes upon us, then
it is that the superiority of the pleasures of
religion is established over those of dissipation
and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us
when we are most in want of their aid. There
is scarcely a more melancholy sight than an old
man who is a stranger to th.>se only true sources
of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same
time how disgusting, is it to see such a one
awkwardly catching at the pleasures of hi3
younger years, which are now beyond his reach,
or feebly attempting to retain them, while they
mock his endeavours and elude his grasp !
WILBERFORCE: Practical View.
ALCHEMY.
The world hath been much abused by the
opinion of making gold ; the work itself I judge
to be possible; but the means hitherto pro-
pounded are (in the practice) full of error.
LORD BACON: Nat. Hist., No. 126.
The alchemists call in many varieties out of
astrology, auricular traditions, and feigned tes-
timonies. LORD BACON.
I was ever of opinion that the philosopher's
stone, and an holy war, were but the rendezvous
of cracked brains, that wore their feather in their
heads. LORD BACON : Holy Wa*
ALLEGORIES.
The characteristic peculiarity of the Pilgrim's
Progress is that it is the only work of its kind
which possesses a strong human interest. Other
allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory
of Bunyan has been read by many thousands
with tears. There are some good allegories in
Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit
by Addison. In these performances there is,
perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity as in the
Pilgrim's Progress. But the pleasure which is
produced by the Vision of Mirza, the Vision of
Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, or the contest
between Rest and Labour, is exactly similar to
the pleasure we derive from one of Cowley's
odes or from a canto of Hudibras. It is a
pleasure which belongs wholly to the under-
standing, and in which the feelings have no part
whatever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though
assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever
lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make
allegory interesting. It was in vain that he
lavished the riches of his mind on the House
of Pride and the House of Temperance. One
unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness,
pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We
become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly
sins, and long for the society of plain men and
women. Of the persons who read the first
ALMS. ALPHABE T. AMBITION.
canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the first
book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to
the end of the poem. Very few and very weary
are those who are in at the death of the Blatant
Beast. If the last six books, which are said to
have been destroyed in Ireland, had been pre-
served, we doubt whether any heart less stout
than that of a commentator would have held
out to the end. LORD MACAULAY :
Southey's Edition of the Pilgrim' 1 s
Progress, Dec. 1830.
ALMS.
Shall we repine at a little misplaced chanty,
we who could no way foresee the effect, when
an all-knowing, all-wise Being showers down
every day his benefits on the unthankful and
undeserving? ATTERBURY.
Our part is to choose out the most deserving
objects,' and the most likely to answer the ends
of our charity, and, when this is done, all is
done that lies in our power: the rest must be
left to Providence. .ATTERBURY.
Those good men who take such pleasure in
relieving the miserable for Christ's sake would
not have been less forward to minister unto
Christ himself. ATTERBURY.
It is proper that alms should come out of a
little purse, as well as out of a great sack; but
surely where there is plenty, charity is a duty,
not a courtesy: it is a tribute imposed by Heaven
upon us, and he is not a good subject who refuses
to pay it. FELLTHAM.
Are we not to pity and supply the poor, though
they have no relation to us? No relation?
That cannot be. The gospel styles them all our
brethren : nay, they have a nearer relation to
us our fellow-members ; and both these from
their relation to our Saviour himself, who calls
them his brethren. SPRAT.
It is indeed the greatest insolence imaginable,
in a creature who would feel the extremes of
thirst and hunger if he did not prevent his
appetites before they call upon him, to be so
forgetful of the common necessities of human
ir.ture as never to cast an eye upon the poor
and needy. The fellow who escaped from a
ship which struck upon a rock in the west, and
joined with the country people to destroy his
bi other sailors and make her a wreck, was
thought a most execrable creature; but does not
every man who enjoys the possession of what
he naturally wants, and is unmindful of the
unsupplied distress of other men, betray the
same temper of mind ?
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 294.
The poor beggar hath a just demand of an
alms from the rich man, who is guilty of fraud,
injustice, and oppression if he does not afford
relief according to his abilities. SWIFT.
ALPHABET.
'Tis a mathematical demonstration, that these
twenty-four letters admit of so many changes in
their order, and make such a long roll of dif-
ferently-ranged alphabets, not two of which are
alike, that they could not all be exhausted
though a million millions of writers should each
write above a thousand alphal>ets a day for the
space of a million millions of years.
BENTLEY.
On the greatest and most useful of all human
inventions, the invention of alphabetical writing,
Plato did not look with much complacency. lie
seems to have thought that the use of letters had
operated on the human mind as the use of the
go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in learn-
ing to swim, is said to operate on the human
body. It was a support which, in his opinion,
soon became indispensable to those who used
it, which made vigorous exertion first unneces-
sary, and then impossible. The powers of the
intellect would, he conceived, have been more
fully developed without this delusive aid. Men
would have been compelled to exercise the un-
derstanding and the memory, and, by deep and
assiduous meditation, to make truth thoroughly
their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowl-
edge is traced on paper, but little is engraved in
the soul. A man is certain that he can find in-
formation at a moment's notice when he wants
it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his
mind. Such a man cannot in strictness be said
to know anything. He has the show without
the reality of wisdom. These opinions Plato has
put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt.
[Plato's Phddrus.~\ But it is evident from the
context that they were his own ; and so they
were understood to be by Quinctilian. [Quinc-
tilian, xi.] Indeed, they are in perfect accord
ance with the whole Platonic system.
LORD MACAULAY: Lord Bacon, July, 1837.
AMBITION.
The soul, considered abstractedly from its
passions, is of a remiss and sedentary nature,
slow in its resolves, and languishing in its exe-
cutions. The use therefore of the passions is
to stir it up and to put it upon action, to awaken
the understanding, to enforce the will, and to
make the whole man more vigorous and atten
tive in the prosecution of his designs. As this
is the end of the passions in general, so it is
particularly of ambition, which pushes the soxil
to such actions as are apt to procure honour and
reputation to the actor. But if we carry our
reflections higher, we may discover farther emts
of Providence in implanting this passion in
mankind.
It was necessary for the world that arts should
be invented and improved, books written and
transmitted to posterity, nations conquered and
civilized. Now, since the proper and genuine
motives to these, and the like great actions,
AMBITION.
would only influence virtuous minds, there would
be but small improvements in the world were
there not some common principle of action
working equally with all men : and such a prin-
ciple is ambition, or a desire of fame, by which
great endowments are not suffered to lie idle
and useless to the public, and many vicious men
are over-reached, as it were, and engaged, con-
trary to their natural inclinations, in a glorious
and laudable course of action. For we may
farther observe that men of the greatest abili-
ties are most fired with ambition; and that, on
the contrary, mean and narrow minds are the
least actuated by it : whether it be that a man's
sense of his own incapacities makes him de-
spair of coming at fame, or that he has not
enough range of thought to look out for any
good which does not more immediately relate to
his interest or convenience; or that Providence,
in the very frame of his soul, would not subject
him to such a passion as would be useless to
the world and a torment to himself.
Were not this desire of fame very strong, the
difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of
losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to
deter a man from so vain a pursuit.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 255.
There are few men who are not ambitious of
distinguishing themselves in the nation or coun-
try where they live, and of growing consider-
able with those with whom they converse.
There is a kind of grandeur and respect which
the meanest and most insignificant part of man-
kind endeavour to procure in the little circle of
their friends and acquaintance. The poorest
mechanic, nay, the man who lives upon com-
mon alms, gets him his set of admirers, and de-
lights in that superiority which he enjoys over
those who are in some respects beneath him.
This ambition, which is natural to the soul of
man, might, methinks, receive a very happy
turn, and, if it were rightly directed, contribute
as much to a person's advantage as it generally
does to his uneasiness and disquiet.
ADDISON.
How often is the ambitious man mortified
with the very praises he receives, if they do not
rise so high as he thinks they ought !
ADDISON.
Ambition raises a tumult in the soul, and
puts it into a violent hurry of thought.
ADDISON.
The ambitious man has little happiness, but
!s subject to much uneasiness and dissatisfaction.
ADDISON.
If any false step be made in the x more mo-
mentous concerns of life, the whole scheme of
ambitious designs is broken. ADDISON.
An ambitious man puts it into the power of
every malicious tongue to throw him into a fit of
melancholy. ADDISON.
Most men have so much of ill -nature, or of
weariness, as not to soothe the vanity of the
ambitious man. ADDISON.
It is observed by Cicero, that men of the
greatest and the most shining parts are most
actuated by ambition. ADDISON.
Of ambitions, it is less harmful the ambition
to prevail in great things, than that other to
appear in everything; for that breeds confusion,
and mars business ; but yet it is less danger
to have an ambitious man stirring in business
than great in dependences. He that seeketh tc
be eminent amongst able men hath a great task j
but that is ever good for the public : but he that
plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the
decay of a whole age. LORD BACON :
Essay XXX 'VIL: Of Ambition.
Ambitious men, if they be checked in their
desires, become secretly discontent, and look
upon men and matters with an evil eye.
LORD BACON.
Although imitation is one of the great instru-
ments used by Providence in bringing our na-
ture towards its perfection, yet if men gave
themselves up to imitation entirely, and each
followed the other, and so on in an eternal
circle, it is easy to see that there never could be
any improvement amongst them. Men must
remain as brutes do, the same at the end that
they are at this day, and that they were in the
beginning of the world. To prevent this, God
has implanted in man a sense of ambition, and
a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of
his excelling his fellows in something deemed
valuable amongst them. It is this passion that
drives men to all the ways we see in use of sig-
nalizing themselves, and that tends to make
whatever excites in a man the idea of this dis-
tinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong
as to make very miserable men take comfort
that they were supreme in misery ; and certain
it is that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves
by something excellent, we begin to take a
complacency in some singular infirmities, follies,
or defects of one kind or other. BURKE :
On the Siiblime and Beautiful, 1756.
The same sun which gilds all nature, and
exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine
upon disappointed ambition. It is something
that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing
but gloom and melancholy. Men in this de-
plorable state of mind find a comfort in spread-
ing the contagion of their spleen. They find an
advantage too ; for it is a general, popular error,
to imagine the loudest complainers for the pub-
lic to be the most anxious for its welfare. If
such persons can answer the ends of relief and
profit to themselves, they are apt to be careless
enough about either the means or the conse-
quences. BURKE :
On the Present State of the Nation, 1769.
Well is it known that ambition can creep as
well as soar. The pride of no person in a .
flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded
than that of him who is mean and cringing
under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.
BURKE :
Letters on a Regicide Peace Letter III., 1797,
AMBITION. AMERICA.
Indeed no man knows, when he cuts off the
incitements to a virtuous ambition and the just
rewards of public service, what infinite mischief
he may do his country through all generations.
BURKE.
Ambition, that high and glorious passion,
which makes such havoc among the sons of
men, arises from a proud desire of honour and
distinction, and, when the splendid trappings in
which it is usually caparisoned are removed,
will be found to consist of the mean ma|brials
of envy, pride, and covetousness. It is de-
scribed by different authors as a gallant madness,
a pleasant poison, a hidden plague, a secret poi-
son, a caustic of the soul, the moth of holiness,
the mother of hypocrisy, and, by crucifying and
disquieting all it takes hold of, the cause of
melancholy and madness.
ROBERT BURTON.
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to
the falcon ; it blinds us first, and then compels
us to tower by reason of our blindness. But,
alas, when we are at the summit of a vain am-
bition we are also at the depth of real misery.
We are placed where time cannot improve, but
must impair us ; where chance and change can-
not befriend, but may betray us: in short, by
attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want,
we have only reached a pinnacle where we have
nothing to hope, but everything to fear.
COLTON : Lacon.
An ardent thirst of honour; a soul unsatisfied
with all it has done, and an unextinguished de-
tire of doing more. DRYDEN.
'Tis almost impossible for poets to succeed
tvithout ambition : imagination must be raised
>v a desire of fame to a desire of pleasing.
DRYDEN.
If we look abroad upon the great multitude
of mankind, and endeavour to trace out the
principles of action in every individual, it will,
I think, seem highly probable that ambition
runs through the whole species, and that every
man, in proportion to the vigour of his com-
plexion, is more or less actuated by it.
HUGHES : Spectator, No. 224.
Where ambition can be so happy as to cover
its enterprises even to the person himself under
the appearance of principle, it is the most in-
curable and inflexible of all human passions.
HUME.
We must distinguish between felicity and
prosperity; for prosperity leads often to am-
bition, and ambition to disappointment : the
course is then over, the wheel turns round but
once, while the reaction of goodness and happi-
ness is perpetual. LANDOR.
Unruly ambition is deaf, not onry to the
advice of friends, but to the counsels and mo-
nitions of reason itself. L'EsTRANGE.
Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes
by keeping them always in show, like the
statue of a public place. MONTAIGNE.
Covetous ambition thinking all too little which
presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in
need of all which it hath not.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forget
the obligations of gratitude.
SIR WALTER SCOTT. '
Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though ha
be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure
he is he shall shoot higher than he who airru
but at a bush. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
The humble and contented man pleases him-
self innocently and easily, while the ambitious
man attempts to please others sinfully and diffi-
cultly, and perhaps unsuccessfully too.
SOUTH.
He that would reckon up all the accidents
preferments depend upon, may as well under-
take to count the sands or sum up infinity.
SOUTH.
The ambitious person must rise early, and sit
up late, and pursue his design with a constant,
indefatigable attendance; he must be infinitely
patient and servile. SOUTH.
It ought not to be the leading object of any
one to become an eminent metaphysician, math-
ematician, or poet, but to render himself happy
as an individual, and an agreeable, a respect-
able, and a useful member of society.
DUGALD STEWART.
The ambitious, the covetous, the superficial,
and the ill-designing are apt to be bold and for-
ward. SWIFT.
Ambition is full of distractions; it teems with
stratagems, and is swelled with expectations as
with a tympany. It sleeps sometimes as the
wind in a. storm, still and quiet for a minute,
that it may burst out into an impetuous blast till
the cordage of his heart-strings crack.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
There is no greater unreasonableness in the
world than in the designs of ambition ; for it
makes the present certainly miserable, unsatis-
fied, troublesome, and discontented, for the un-
certain acquisition of an honour which nothing
can secure ; and, besides a thousand possibilitirr
of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater cor-
tainty than our life : and when we are dead RL"
the world sees who was the fool.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
AMERICA.
I remember, Sir, with a melancholy pleasure,
the situation of the honourable gentleman who
made the motion for the repeal ; in that crisis,
when the whole trading interest of this empire,
AMERICA.
crammed into your lobbies, with a trembling
and anxious expectation, waited, almost to a
winter's return of light, their fate from your
resolutions. When at length you had deter-
mined in their favour, and your doors thrown
open showed them the figure of their deliverer
in the well-earned triumph of his important
victory, from the whole of that grave multitude
(here arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and
transport. They jumped upon him like chil-
dren on a long-absent father. They clung about
him as captives about their redeemer. All Eng-
land, all America, joined in his applause. Nor
did he seem insensible to the best of all earthly
rewards, the love and admiration of his fellow-
citizens. Hope elevated and joy brightened his
crest. I stood near him ; and his face, to use
the expression of the Scripture of the first
martyr, " his face was if it had been the face of
ai; angel." I do not know how others feel, but
if I had stood in that situation I never would
have exchanged it for all that kings in their pro-
fusion could bestow. I did hope that that day's
danger and honour would have been a bond to
hold us all together forever. But, alas ! that,
with other pleasing visions, is long since van-
ished. EDMUND BURKE :
Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.
On this business of America, I confess I am
serious, even to sadness. I have had but one
opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I
sat, in Parliament. The noble lord will, as
usual, probably, attribute the part taken by me
and my friends in this business to a desire of
getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy
and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I
should take away most of his wit, and all his
argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of
all his wit, and indeed blows much heavier,
than stand answerable to God for embracing a
system that tends to the destruction of some of
the very best and fairest of' His works. But I
know the map of England as well as the noble
lord, or as any other person ; and I know that
the way I take is not the road to preferment.
BURKE:
Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.
Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance
in our colonies which contributes no mean part
towards the growth and effect of this untract-
able spirit: I mean their education. In no
country, perhaps, in the world is law so general
a study. The profession itself is numerous and
powerful, and in most provinces it takes the
lead. The greater number of the deputies sent
to the Congress were lawyers. But all" who read,
and most do read, endeavour to obtain some
smattering in that science. I have been told by
an eminent bookseller that in no branch of his
business, after tracts of popular devotion, were
10 many books as those on the law exported to
the plantations. The colonists have now fallen
into the way of printing them for their own use.
I hear that they have sold nearly as many of
P.lackstone's " Commentaries" in America as in
England. General Gage marks out this dispo-
sition very particularly in a letter on your table,
He states that all the people in his government
are lawyers, or smatterers in law, and that in
Boston they have been enabled, by successful
chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of
your capital penal constitutions.
BURKE:
Speech on Conciliation with America,
March 22, 1775.
For that service, for all service, whether of
reveaue, trade, or empire, my trust is in her
interest in the British Constitution. My hold
of the colonies is in the close affection which
grows from common names, from kindred blood,
from similar privileges and equal protection.
These are ties which, though light as air, are as
strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always
keep the idea of their civil rights associated
with your government, they will cling and
grapple to you, and no force under heaven will
be of power to tear them from their allegiance.
But let it be once understood that your govern-
ment may be one thing and their privileges an-
other, that these two things may exist without
any mutual relation, the cement is gone, the
cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens
to decay and dissolution. As long as you have
the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of
this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sa-
cred temple consecrated to our common faith,
wherever the chosen race and sons of England
worship freedom, they will turn their faces to-
wards you. The more they multiply, the more
friends you will have ; the more ardently they
love liberty, the more perfect will be their obe-
dience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It
is a weed that grows in every soil.
BURKE:
Speech on Conciliation with America, March
22, 1775.
Deny them this participation of freedom, and
you break that sole bond which originally made,
and must still preserve, the unity of the empire.
Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that
your registers and your bonds, your affidavits
and your sufferances, your cockets and your
clearances, are what form the great securities of
your commerce. Do not dream that your letters
of office, and your instructions, and your sus-
pending clauses are the things that hold to-
gether the great contexture of this mysterious
whole. These things do not make your gov-
ernment. Dead instruments, passive tools as
they are, it is the spirit of the English commu-
nion that gives all their life and efficacy to them.
It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which,
infused through the mighty mass, pervades,
feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of
the empire, even down to the minutest member.
Is it "not the same virtue which does every-
thing for us here in England ?
BURKE:
Speech on Conciliation ivith America, March
22, 1775.
I am, and ever have been, deeply sensible ->f
the difficulty of icconciling the strong presiding
AMERICA. AMUSEMENTS.
33
power, that is so useful towards the conserva-
tion of a vast, disconnected, infinitely diversified
empire, with that liberty and safety of the prov-
inces which they must enjoy (in opinion and
practice at least) or they will not be provinces
at all. I know, and have long felt, the diffi-
culty of reconciling the unwieldy haughtiness
of a great ruling nation, habituated to command,
pampered by enormous wealth, and confident
from a long course of prosperity and victory, to
the high spirit of free dependencies, animated
with the first glow and activity of juvenile heat,
and assuming to themselves, as their birthright,
some part of that very pride which oppresses
them. They who perceive no difficulty in recon-
ciling these tempers (which, however, to make
peace, must some way or other be reconciled)
are much above my capacity, or much below the
magnitude of the business. Of one thing I am
perfectly clear: that it is not by deciding the
suit, but by compromising the difference, that
peace can be restored or kept. They who would
put an end to such quarrels by declaring roundly
in favour of the whole demands of either party
have mistaken, in my humble opinion, the office
of a mediator. BURKE :
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777.
I am beyond measure surprised that you seem
to feel no sort of terror at the awful ness of the
situation in which you are placed by Providence,
or into which you thought proper to intrude
yourselves. A whole people culprit ! Nations
under accusation ! A tribunal erected for com-
monwealths ! This is no vulgar idea, and no
trivial undertaking; it makes me shudder,
confess that, in comparison of the magnitude
of the situation, I feel myself shrunk to nothing.
Next to that tremendous day in which it is re
vealed that the saints of God shall judge the
world, I know nothing that fills my mind with
greater apprehension ; and yet I see the matter
trifled with, as if it were the beaten routine, an
ordinary quarter-session, or a paltry course of
common gaol-delivery. BURKE:
On the Measures against the American
Colonies: Corresp., 1844, iv. 488.
Everything has been done [in your History
of America] which was so naturally to be ex
peeled from the author of the History of Scot
land, and the age of Charles the Fifth. I
believe few hooks have done more than this
towards clearing up dark points, correcting
errors, and removing prejudices. You have
too, the rare secret of rekindling an interest in
subjects that had been so often treated, and in
which everything that could feed a vital flame
appeared to have been consumed. I am sure 1
read many parts of your history with that fresh
concern and anxiety which attends those who
are not previously informed of the event.
BURKE :
Letter to Dr. W. Robertson, June 10, 1777
Such was the orthodox theory; but, in the
same way that the knowing ones on the race
course often make the most astounding mistake:
3
n their forecastings, to their own great pecuniary
lisadvanta^e and the edification of a censorious
world, so will it frequently occur that professed
icientific men, too mindful of abstract theories
o make practical innovations, find themselves
iuddenly confronted with some new application
of those theories, or some complete reversal of
hem. These audacious exhibitions of scientific
icterodoxy have of late years been more com-
mon in America. The active, volatile, knowing
States' man is as little disposed to submit to an-
iquated authority in intellectual matters as in
political affairs. Household Words.
AMUSEMENTS.
The next method, therefore, that I would pro-
pose to fill up our time, should be useful and
innocent diversions. I must confess, I think it
is below reasonable creatures to be altogether
conversant in such diversions as are merely
innocent, and have nothing else to recommend
them but that there is no hurt in them. Whether
any kind of gaming has even thus much to say
for itself I shall not determine ; but I think it
is very wonderful to see persons of the best
sense passing away a dozen hours together in
shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no
other conversation but what is made up of .a
few game phrases, and no other ideas but those
of black or red spots ranged together in differ-
ent figures. Would not a man laugh to hear
any one of this specjes complaining that life is
short? ADDISON: Spectator, No. 93.
Encourage such innocent amusements as may
disembitter the minds of men and make them
mutually rejoice in the same agreeable satisfac-
tions. ADDISON.
Whatever amuses serves to kill time, to lull
the faculties, and to banish reflection. What-
ever entertains usually awakens the understand-
ing or gratifies the fancy. Whatever diverts is
lively in its nature, and sometimes tumultuous
in its effects. CRABB: Synonymies.
It is a private opinion of mine that the dull
people in this country no matter whether they
belong to the Lords or the Commons are the
people who, privately as well as publicly, govern
the nation. By dull people I mean people, of
all degrees of rank and education, who never
want to be amused. I don't know how long it
is since these dreary members of the population
first hit on the cunning idea the only idea they
ever had or will have of calling themselves
Respectable; but I do know that, ever since
that time, this great nation has been afraid of
them, afraid in religious, in political, and in
social matters. Household Words.
Mere innocent amusement is in itself a good,
when it interferes with no greater, especially as
it may occupy the place of some other that may
not be innocent. The Eastern monarch who
proclaimed a reward to him who should dis-
34
ANAL YSIS.ANCESTR Y.
cover a new pleasure would have deserved well
of mankind had he stipulated that it should be
blameless. Those, again, who delight in the
study of human nature may improve in the
knowledge of it, and in the profitable applica-
tion of that knowledge, by the perusal of such
fictions [by Miss Jane Ausfen] as those before
us. WHATELY :
Diiblin Quart. Rev., 1821.
ANALYSIS.
Philosophers hasten too much from the ana-
lytic to the synthetic method ; that is, they draw
general conclusions from too small a number
^f particular observations and experiments.
LORD BOLINGBROKE.
Analysis and synthesis, though commonly
treated as two different methods, are, if properly
understood, only the two necessary parts of the
same method. Each is the relative and cor-
relative of the other. SIR W. HAMILTON.
The investigation of difficult things by the
method of analysis ought ever to precede the
method of composition. SIR I. NEWTON.
The word Analysis signifies the general and
particular heads of a discourse, with their
mutual connections, both co-ordinate and sub-
ordinate, drawn out into one or more tables.
DR. I. WATTS.
ANCESTRY.
Title and ancestry render a good name more
illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
ADDISON.
It is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle
not in decay; how much more to behold an
ancient family which have stood against the
waves and weathers of time I
LORD BACON.
The power of perpetuating our property in
our families is one of the most valuable and
interesting circumstances belonging to it, and
that which tends the most to the perpetuation
of society itself. It makes our weakness sub-
servient to our virtue ; it grafts benevolence
even upon avarice. The possessors of family
wealth, and of the distinction which attends
hereditary possession (as most concerned in it),
are the natural securities for this transmission.
BURKE :
Reflections on the Revohttion in France, 1 790.
For though hereditary wealth, and the rank
which goes with it, are too much idoli/ed by
creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject ad-
mirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in
shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming,
short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some
decent, regulated pre-eminence, some prefer-
ence (not exclusive appropriation) given to
birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor im-
politic. BURKE:
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Alterations of surnames have so intricated,
or rather obscured, the truth of our pedigrees,
that it will be no little hard labour to deduce
them. CAMDEN.
A long series of ancestors shows the native
lustre with advantage; but if he any way de-
generate from his line, the least spot is visible
on ermine. DRYDEN.
His ancestors have been more and more
solicitous to keep up the breed of their dogs
and horses than that of their children.
GOLDSMITH.
If the virtues of strangers be so attractive to
us, how infinitely more so should be those ol
our own kindred; and with what additional
energy should the precepts of our parents influ-
ence us, when we trace the transmission of those
precepts from father to son through successive
generations, each bearing the testimony of a
virtuous, useful, and honourable life to their
truth and influence; and all uniting in a kind
and earnest exhortation to their descendants so
to live on earth that (followers of Him through
whose grace alone we have power to obey Him)
we may at last be reunited with those who have
gone before, and those who shall come after us:
No wanderer lost
A family in heaven.
LORD LINDSAY.
A people which takes no pride in the noble
achievements of remote ancestors will never
achieve anything worthy to be remembered with
pride by remote descendants.
LORD MACAULAY.
The man who has not anything to boast of
but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato,
the only good belonging to him is under ground.
SIR T. OVERBURY.
We highly esteem and stand much upon our
birth, though we derive nothing from our ances-
tors but our bodies ; and it is useful to improve
this advantage, to imitate their good examples.
RAY.
The origin of all mankind was the same : it
is only a clear and a good conscience that makes
a man noble, for that is derived from heaven
itself. It was the saying of a great man that,
if we could trace our descents, we should find
all slaves to come from princes, and all princes
from slaves ; and fortune has turned all things
topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions : be-
side, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a
trifle" that serves only when he dies to furnish
out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.
SENECA.
I am no herald to inquire into men's pedi-
gree ; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues.
SIR P. SIDNEY.
ANCESTRY. ANCIENTS.
35
What is birth to man if it shall be a stain to
his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?
SIR P. SIDNEY.
He that boasts of his ancestors, the founders
and raisers of a family, doth confess that he
hath less virtue. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Human and mortal though we are, we are,
nevertheless, not mere insulated beings, without
relation to the past or future. Neither the point
of time nor the spot of earth in which we phys-
ically live bounds our rational and intellectual
enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowl-
edge of its history, and in the future by hope
'and anticipation. By ascending to an associa-
tion with our ancestors; by contemplating their
example, and studying their character; by par-
taking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit ;
by accompanying them in their toils ; by sympa-
thizing in their sufferings and rejoicing in their
successes and their triumphs, we mingle our
own existence with theirs, and seem to belong
to their age. We become their contemporaries,
live the lives which they lived, endure what
they endured, and partake in the rewards which
they enjoyed. DANIEL WEBSTER.
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is
concerned, is that it should be such as to give
him but little occasion to think much about it.
WHATELY.
In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing
was ever better said than by Bishop Warburton
as is reported in the House of Lords, on the
occasion of some angry dispute which had arisen
between a peer of noble family and one of a
new creation. He said that " high birth was a
thing which he never knew any one disparage,
except those who had it not; and he never knew
any one make a boast of it who had anything
else to be proud of." . . . And it is curious that
a person of so exceptionable a character that no
one would like to have him for a father, may
confer a kind of dignity on his great-great-great-
grandchildren. ... If he were to discover that
he could trace up his descent distinctly to a man
who had deserved hanging for robbery not a
traveller of his purse, but a king of his empire,
or a neighbouring state of a province he would
be likely to make no secret of it, and even to be
better pleased, inwardly, than if he had made
out a long line of ancestors who had been very
honest farmers. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Nobility.
ANCIENTS.
To account for this, we must consider that
the first race of authors, who were the great
heroes in writing, were destitute of all rules and
arts of criticism; and for that reason, though
they excel later writers in greatness of genius,
they fall short of them in accuracy and correct-
ness. The moderns cannot reach their beauties,
but can avoid their imperfections. When the
world was furnished with these authors of thr
first eminence, there grew up another set of
writers, who gained themselves a reputation by
the remarks which they made on the works of
those who preceded them.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 61.
We may observe that in the first ages of th
world, when the great souls and masterpieces
of human nature were produced, men shined
by a noble simplicity of behaviour, and were
strangers to those little embellishments which
are so fashionable in our present conversation.
And it is very remarkable, that notwithstanding
we fall short at present of the ancients in po-
etry, painting, oratory, history, architecture, and
all the noble arts and sciences which depend
more upon genius than experience, we exceed
them as much in doggerel humour, burlesque,
and all the trivial arts of ridicule. We meet
with more raillery among the moderns, but
more good sense among the ancients.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 249.
It is pleasant to see a verse of an old poet
revolting from its original sense, and siding with
a modern subject. ADDISON.
The poetical fables are more ancient than the
astrological influences, that were not known to
the Greeks till after Alexander the Great.
BENTLEY.
In ancient authors a parenthetical form of
writing is even more common than among mod
erns. BRANDE.
He calls up the heroes of former ages from a
state of inexistence to adorn and diversify his
poem. BROOME :
On the Odyssey.
In this age we have a sort of reviviscence,
not, I fear of the power, but of a taste for the
power, of the early times. COLERIDGE.
What English readers, unacquainted with
Greek or Latin, will believe me when we con-
fess we derive all that is pardonable in us from
ancient fountains ? DRYDEN.
In tragedy and satire I maintain, against some
critics, that this age and the last have excelled
the ancients; and I would instance in Shake-
speare of the former, in Dorset of the latter.
DRY DEN.
Some are offended because I turned these
tales into modern English ; because they look
on Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit, not
worth reviving. DRYDEN.
The heathen poet in commending the charity
of Dido to the Trojans spoke like a Christian.
DRYDEN.
The critics of a more exalted taste may dis-
cover such beauties in the ancient poetry as may
escape the comprehension of as pigmies of a
more limited genius. GARTH.
ANCIENTS. ANGELS.
It is an unaccountable vanity to spend all our
time raking into the scraps and imperfect re-
mains of former ages, and neglecting the clearer
notices of our own. GLANVILL.
The sages of old live again in us, and in opin-
ions there is a metempsychosis.
GLANVILL.
The love of things ancient doth argue stayed-
ness, but levity and want of experience maketh
apt unto innovation. HOOKER.
Many times that which deserveth approbation
vould hardly find favour if they which propose
it were not to profess themselves scholars, and
followers of the ancients. HOOKER.
Among the ancients there was not mu-ch deli-
cacy of breeding, or that polite deference and
respect which civility obliges us either to express
or counterfeit towards the persons with whom
jve converse. HUME.
Nothing conduces more to letters than to ex-
amine the writings of the ancients, provided the
plagues of judging and pronouncing against
them be away; such as envy, bitterness, pre-
cipitation, impudence, and scurril scoffing,
BEN JONSON.
They think that whatever is called old must
have the decay of time upon it, and truth too
.were liable to mould and rottenness.
LOCKE.
Though the knowledge they have left us be
worth our study, yet they exhausted not all its
rtreasures : they left a great deal for the industiy
,and sagacity of after-ages. LOCKE.
In the philosophy of history the moderns have
x very far surpassed the ancients. It is not, in-
,deed, strange that the Greeks and Romans should
,not have carried the science of government, or
. any other experimental science, so far as it has
'.been carried in our time ; for the experimental
-sciences are generally in a state of progression.
They were ;b.etter understood in the seventeenth
. century thq,n in the sixteenth, and in the eigh-
teenth century than in the seventeenth. But this
constant improvement, this natural growth of
knowledge, .will not altogether account for the
.immense, superiority of the modern writers. The
difference, is a difference not in degree, but of
ikind. It is not,merely that new principles have
been discovered, but that new faculties seem to
be exerted. .;It;is,not that at one time the human
intellect shpujd have made but small progress,
and at another J.in?e have advanced far; but that
at cne time it should have been stationary, and
at another time constantly proceeding. In taste
and imaginatiqn,,in the graces of style, in the
arts of persuasiqn, ; in,tbe magnificence of public
works, the ancients were at least our equals.
They reasoned as justly as ourselves on subjects
which required pure demonstration. But in the
moral sciences they, made scarcely any advance.
During the. long period which elapsed between
the fifth century before the Christian era and the
fifteenth .after ; it, little perceptible progress was
made. All the metaphysical discoveries of all
the philosophers from the time of Socrates to
the northern invasion are not to be compared in
importance with those which have been made in
England every fifty years since the time of Eliza^
beth. There is not the least reason to believe
that the principles of government, legislation,
and political economy were better understood
in the time of Augustus Csesar than in the time
of Pericles. In our own country, the sound
doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have been
within the lifetime of a single generation dimly
hinted, boldly propounded, defended, systema-
tized, adopted by all reflecting men of all par
ties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorpo
rated into laws and treaties.
LORD MACAULAY: History, May, 1828.
Seeing every nation affords not experience
and tradition enough for all kind of learning;
therefore we are taught the languages of those
people who have been most industrious after
wisdom. MILTON.
But, after all, if they have any merit, it is to
be attributed to some good old authors whose
works I study. POPE :
On Pastoral Poetry.
These passages in that book were enough to
humble the presumption of our modern sciolists,
if their pride were not as great as their ignor-
ance. SIR W. TEMPLE.
All the writings of the ancient Goths were
composed in verse, which were called runes, or
viises, and from thence the term of wise came.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
It was the custom of those former ages, in
their over-much gratitude, to advance the first
authors of any useful discovery among the num-
ber of their gods. BISHOP WILKINS.
ANGELS.
Though sometimes effected by the immediate
fiat of the divine will, yet I think they are most
ordinarily done by the ministration of angels.
SIR M. HALE.
Angels are spirits immaterial and intellectual,
the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces
where there is nothing but light and immortal-
ity ; no shadow of matter for tears, discontent-
ments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work
upon ; but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even
for ever and ever, do dwell. HOOKER.
The obedience of men is to imitate the obe-
dience .of angels, and rational beings on earth
are to live unto God, as rational beings in
heaven live unto him. LAW.
The supposition that angels assume bodies
need not startle us, since some of the most an-
cient and most learned fathers seemed to believe
that they had bodies. LOCKE.
ANGER.
37
Superior beings above us, who enjoy perfect
happiness, are more steadily determined in their
choice of good than we, and yet they are not
less happy or less free than we. LOCKE.
ANGER.
There is no other way but to meditate and
mminate well upon the effects of anger, how
it troubles man's life ; and the best time to do
tLis is to look back upon anger when the fit is
thoroughly over. Seneca saith well, "that an-
ger is like rain, which breaks itself upon that it
falls." The Scripture exhorteth us " to possess
our souls in patience:" whosoever is out of pa-
tience is out of possession of his soul. . . .
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness ; as it
appears well in the weakness of those subjects
in whom it reigns, children, women, old folks,
sick folks. Only men must beware that they
carry their anger rather with scorn than with
fear ; so that they may seem rather to be above
the injury than below it; which is a thing easily
done, if a man will give law to himself in it.
. . . To contain anger from mischief, though it
take hold of a man, there be two things whereof
you must have special caution : the one of ex-
treme bitterness of words, especially if they be
aculeate and proper; for " communia male-
dicta" are nothing so much ; and again, that in
anger a man reveal no secrets ; for that makes
him not fit for society : the other, that you do
not peremptorily break off in any business in
a fit of anger ; but howsoever you show bitter-
ness, do not act anything that is not revocable.
LORD BACON :
Essay L VIII. : Of Anger.
There is no affectation in passion ; for that
putteth a man out of his precepts, and in a new
case there custom leaveth him.
LORD BACON.
Choleric and quarrelsome persons will engage
one into their quarrels. LORD BACON.
He does anger too much honour who calls it
madness, which being a distemper of the brain,
and a total absence of all reason, is innocent of
all the ill effects it may produce, whereas anger
is an affected madness, compounded of pride and
folly, and an intention to do commonly more
mischief than it can bring to pass.
LORD CLARENDON.
Never do anything that can denote an angry
mind ; for, although everybody is born with a
certain degree of passion, and, from untoward
circumstances, will sometimes feel its operation,
and be what they call " out of humour," yet a
sensible man or woman will never allow it to be
discovered. Check and restrain it ; never make
any determination until you find it has entirely
subsided; and always avoid saying anything
that you may wish unsaid.
LORD COLLINGWOOD.
The sun should not set upon our anger,
neither should he rise upon our confidence.
We should freely forgive, but forget rarely. I
will not be revenged, and I owe to my enemy ;
but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
C. C. COLTON.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
CONFUCIUS.
Had I a careful and pleasant companion, that
should show me my angry face in a glass, I
should not at all take it ill. Some are wont to
have a looking-glass held to them while thi-y
wash, though to little purpose; but to behold a
man's self so unnaturally disguised and disor-
dered, will conduce not a little to the impeach-
ment of anger. PLUTARCH-
To be angry, is to revenge the faults of others
upon ourselves. PoPE.
If anger is not restrained, it is frequently
more hurtful to us than the injury that pro-
vokes it. SENECA.
Anger is a transient hatred; or, at least, very
like it. SOUTH.
It might have pleased in the heat and hurry
of his rage, but must have displeased in cool,
sedate reflection. SoUtH*
Anger is like the waves of a troubled sea;
when it is corrected with a soft reply, as with a
little strand, it retires, and leaves nothing be-
hind but froth and shells no permanent mis-
chief. JEREMY TAYLOR.
The anger of an enemy represents our faults
or admonishes us of our duty with more hearti-
ness than the kindness of a friend.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Be careful to discountenance in children any-
thing that looks like rage and furious anger.
TlLLOTSON.
To be angry about trifles is mean and child-
ish ; to rage and be furious is brutish ; and to
maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice
and temper of devils ; but to prevent and sup-
press rising resentment is wise and glorious, is
manly and divine. DR. I. WATTS.
Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Senti-
ments, seems to consider as the chief point of
distinction between anger and hatred, the neces-
sity to the gratification of the former that the
object of it should not only be punished, but
punished by means of the offended person, and
on account of the particular injury inflicted.
Anger requires that the offender should not
only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve
for that particular wrong which has been done
by him. The natural gratification of this pas-
sion tends, of its own accord, to produce all the
political ends of punishment : the correction of
the criminal, and example to the public.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Anger.
ANGLING. ANTICIPA TION. ANTIQUITIES.
Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, . . . defines anger
to be ", desire, accompanied by mental uneasi-
ness, of avenging one's self, or, as it were, in-
flicting punishment for something that appears
an unbecoming slight, either in things which
concern one's self, or some of one's friends."
And he hence infers that, if this be anger, it
must be invariably felt towards some individual,
not against a class or description of persons.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Anger.
ANGLING.
Angling was, after tedious study, a rest to
his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of
sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a mod-
erator of passions, a procurer of contentedness.
IZAAK WALTON.
I have known a very good fisher angle dili-
gently four or six hours for a river carp, and not
have a bite. IZAAK WALTON.
He that reads Plutarch shall find that angling
was not contemptible in the days of Mark
Antony and Cleopatra. IZAAK WALTON.
ANTICIPATION.
As the memory relieves the mind in her
vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of
thought by ideas of what is passed, we have
other faculties that agitate and employ her for
what is to come. These are the passions of
hope and fear.
By these two passions we reach forward into
futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts
objects that lie hid in the remotest depths of
time. We suffer misery and enjoy happiness
before they are in being; we can set the sun
and stars forward, or lose sight of them by
wandering into those retired parts of eternity,
when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 471.
I would not anticipate the relish of any hap-
piness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before
it actually arrives. ADDISON.
The problem is, whether a man constantly
and strongly believing that such a thing shall
be, it don't help any thing to the effecting of the
thing. LORD BACON.
We shall find our expectation of the future to
be a gift more distressful even than the former.
To fear an approaching evil is certainly a most
disagreeable sensation ; and in expecting an
approaching good we experience the inquietude
of wanting actual possession.
Thus, whichever way we look, the prospect
is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures
we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and
before, we see pleasures which we languish to
possess, and are consequently uneasy till we
possess them. GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter XLIV.
All fear is in itself painful ; and when it con-
duces not to safety is painful without use. Every
consideration, therefore, by which groundless
terrors may be removed, adds something to
human happiness. It is likewise not unworthy
of remark, that, in proportion as our cares are
employed upon the future, they are abstracted
from the present, from the only time which we
can call our own, and of which, if we neglect
the apparent duties, to make provision against
visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract
our own purpose ; for he, doubtless, mistakes
his true interest who thinks that he can increase
his safety when he impairs his virtue.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 29. .
ANTIQUITIES.
The great magazine for all kinds of treasme
is supposed to be the bed of the Tiber. We
may be sure, when the Romans lay under the
apprehensions of seeing their city sacked by a
barbarous enemy, that they would take care to
bestow such of their riches that way as could
best bear the water. ADDISON.
A man that is in Rome can scarce see an
object that does not call to mind a piece of a
Latin poet or historian. ADDISON.
There are in Rome two sets of antiquities,
the Christian and the Heathen : the former,
though of a fresher date, are so embroiled with
fable and legend that one receives but little
satisfaction. ADDISON.
The antiquaries are for cramping their sub-
ject into as narrow a space as they can ; and for
reducing the whole extent of a science into a
few general maxims. ADDISON.
Several supercilious critics will treat an author
with the greatest contempt if he fancies the old
Romans wore a girdle. ADDISON.
Our admiration of the antiquities about
Naples and Rome does not so much arise out
of their greatness as uncommonness.
ADDISON.
When a man sees the prodigious pains our
forefathers have been at in these barbarous
buildings, one cannot but fancy what miracles
of aichitecture they would have left us had they
been instructed in the right way.
ADDISON.
As for the obsei'vation of Machiavel, traduc-
ing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him
lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities : I do
not find that those zeals last long ; as it appeared
in the succession of Sabinian, who did revive
the former antiquities. LORD BACON.
In matters of antiquity, if the*ir originals
escape due relation, they fall into great obscuri-
ties, and such as future ages seldom reduce into
a resolution. SIR T. BROWNE.
ANTIQUITIES. ANXIETY. APA THY.
39
[An antiquary] is one that has his being in
this age, but his life and conversation is in the
days of old. He despises the present age as
in innovation, and slights the future; but has a
great value for that which is past and gone,
like the madman that fell in love with Cleo-
patra. All his curiosities take place of one an-
othci according to their seniority, and he values
them not by their abilities, but their standing.
He has a great veneration for words that are
stricken in years and are grown so aged that
they have outlived their employments. . . . He
values things wrongfully upon their antiquity,
forgetting that the most modern are really the
most ancient of all things in the world, like
those that reckon their pounds before their shil-
lings and pence, of which they are made up.
SAMUEL BUTLER : Characters.
It is with antiquity as with ancestry ; nations
are proud of the one, and individuals of the
other. C. C. COLTON.
The ancient pieces are beautiful because they
resemble the beauties of nature ; and nature
will ever be beautiful which resembles those
beauties of antiquity. DRYDEN.
In the dark recesses of antiquity, a great poet
may and ought to feign such things as he finds
not there, if they can be brought to embellish
that subject which he treats. DRYDEN.
The prints which we see of antiquities may
contribute to form our genius and to give us
great ideas. DRYDEN.
We have a mistaken notion of-antiquity, call-
ing that so which in truth is the world's nonage.
GLANVILL.
The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may
very well serve to amuse the curious ; but the
works of the moderns, like the current coin of
a kingdom, are much better for immediate use :
the former are often prized above their intrinsic
value, and kept with care ; the latter seldom
pass for more than they are worth, and are often
subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics
and clipping compilers : the works of antiquity
were ever praised, those of the moderns read:
the treasures of our ancestors have our esteem,
and we boast the passion : those of contempo-
rary genius engage our heart, although we blush
to own it : the visits we pay the former resem-
ble those we pay the great : the ceremony is
troublesome, and yet such as we would not choose
to forego : our acquaintance with modern books
is like sitting with a friend ; our pride is not
flattered in the interview, but it gives more in-
ternal satisfaction. GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter LXXV.
Considering the casualties of wars, transmi-
grations, especially that of the general flood,
there might probably be an obliteration of all
those monuments of antiquity that ages prece-
dent at some time have yielded.
SIR M. HALE.
Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted)
but man's authority born some ages before us ?
Now, for the truth of things, time makes no al-
teration; things are still the same they are, let
the time be past, present, or to come. Those
things which we reverence for antiquity, what
were they at their first birth ? Were they false ?
time cannot make them true. Were they
true ? time cannot make them more true. The
circumstance, therefore, of time, in respect of
truth and error is merely impertinent.
JOHN HALES, THE EVER-MEMORABLE:
Of Inquiry and Private Jmignient in
Religion.
It is looked upon as insolence for a man to
adhere to his own opinion against the current
stream of antiquity. LOCKE.
He had . . . that sort of exactness which
would have made him a respectable antiquary.
LORD MACAULAY.
The dearest interests of parties have fre-
quently been staked on the results of the re-
searches of antiquaries.
LORD MACAULAY.
It is considerable that some urns have had
inscriptions on them expressing that the lamps
were burning. BISHOP WILKINS.
ANXIETY.
This fear of any future difficulties or misfor
tune is so natural to the mind, that were a man's
sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end
of his life, it would generally be found that he
had suffered more from the apprehension of
such evils as never happened to him, than from
those evils which had really befallen him. To
this we may add, that among those evils which
befall us, there are many which have been more
painful to us in the prospect than by their actual
pressure. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 505.
Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is
the parent of many sins, and of more miseries.
In a world where everything is doubtful, where
you may be disappointed, and be blessed in dis-
appointment, what means this restless stir and
commotion of mind ? Can your solicitude alter
the cause or unravel the intricacy of human
events ? Can your curiosity pierce through the
cloud which the Supreme Being hath made im-
penetrable to mortal eye ? To provide against
every important danger by the employment of
the most promising means is the office of wis-
dom ; but at this point wisdom slops.
BLAIR.
APATHY.
There are some men formed with feelings so
blunt, that they can hardly be said to be awaka
during the whole course of their lives.
BUB KB.
APOPHTHEGMS. APOSTASY. APOTHECARY.
As the passions are the springs of most of our
actions, a state of apathy has come to signify a
sort of moral inertia, the absence of all activity
or energy. According to the Stoics, apathy
meant the extinction of the passions by the
ascendency of reason. FLEMING.
In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor
true happiness can be found. HUME.
APOPHTHEGMS.
Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament
and delight, but also for action and civil use, as
being the edge tools of speech, which cut and
penetrate the knots of business and affairs.
LORD BACON.
The first and most ancient inquirers into
truth were wont to throw their knowledge into
aphorisms, or short, scattered, unmethodical
sentences. LORD BACON.
Julius Caesar did write a collection of apoph-
thegms, as appears in an epistle of Cicero. It
is a pity his book is lost, for I imagine they were
collected with judgment and choice.
LORD BACON : Apophthegms.
We may magnify the apophthegms, or reputed
replies of wisdom, whereof many are to be seen
in Laertius and Lycosthenes.
SIR T. BROWNE : Vulgar Errors.
Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the
largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge
consists of aphorisms, and the greatest and best
of men is but an aphorism. COLERIDGE.
Every man who has seen the world knows
that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
If it be very moral and very true, it may serve
for a copy to a charity boy. If, like those of
Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical,
it may make an excellent motto for an essay.
But few indeed of the many wise apophthegms
which have been uttered, from the time of the
Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard,
have prevented a single foolish action.
LORD MACAULAY :
Machiavelli, March, 1827.
In a numerous collection of our Saviour's
apophthegms there is not to be found one ex-
ample of sophistry or of false subtilty, or of any
thing approaching thereunto. PALEY.
The word parable is sometimes used in Scrip-
ture in a large and general sense, and applied
to short, sententious sayings, maxims, or aphor-
isms. BISHOP PORTEUS.
It is astonishing the influence foolish apo-
thegms have upon the mass of mankind, though
they are not unfrcquently fallacies.
REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
By ... scattering short apothegms and little
pleasant stories, . . . his son was. in his infancy
taught to abhor . . . vice.
WALTON.
APOSTASY.
Their sins have the aggravation of being sim
against grace, and forsaking and departing froit
God ; which respect makes the state apostate,
as the most unexcusable, so the most despe-
rately dangerous, state. HAMMOND.
APOTHECARY.
The ideal physician of Hippocrates is, in this
country, the apothecary of the present day. Ga-
len says that he had an apotheke in which hi?
drugs were kept, and where his medicines were
always made under his own eye, or by his hand.
For one moment we pause on the word apo-
theke, whence apothecary is derived. It meant
among the Greeks a place where anything is
put by and preserved, especially, in the first
instance, wine. The Romans had no wine-
cellars, but kept their wine-jars upon uppei
floors, where they believed that the contents
would ripen faster. The small floors were
called fumaria, the large ones apothecse. The
apotheca, being a dry, aiiy place, became, of
course, the best possible store-room for drugs,
and many apothecas became drug-stores, with
an apothecarius in charge. It is a misfortune
then if it be one attached to the name of
apothecary that it has in it association with the
shop. But, to say nothing of Podalirius and
Machaon, Cullen and William Hunter dispensed
their own medicines. Household Words.
In the year one thousand three hundred and
forty-five, Coursus de Gangeland, called an
apothecary of London, serving about the person
of King Edward the Third, received a pension
of sixpence a day as a reward for his attendance
on the king during a serious illness which he
had in Scotland. Henry the Eighth gave forty
marks a year to John Soda, apothecary, as a
medical attendant on the Princess Mary, who
was a delicate, unhealthy young woman; so that
we thus have the first indications of the position
of an English apothecary, as one whose calling
for two hundred years maintained itself, and
continued to maintain itself till a few years after
the establishment of the College of Physicians,
as that of a man who might be engaged even
by kings in practice of the healing art. But in
the third year of Queen Mary's reign, thirty-
seven years after the establishment of the Col
lege of Physicians, both surgeons and apothe-
caries were prohibited the practising of physic.
In Henry the Eighth's time it had been settled,
on the other hand, that surgery was an especial
part of physic, and any of the company or fel-
lowship of physicians were allowed to engage
in it. Household Words.
About one hundred and fifty years ago, talk-
ing like an apothecary was a proverbial phrase
for talking nonsense; and our early dramatists
when they produced an apothecary on the stage
always presented him as a garrulous and foolish
APOTHECARY. ARGUMENT.
man. It was in what may he called the middle
period of the history of the apothecary's calling
in this country that it had thus fallen into grave
contempt. At first it was honoured, and it is
now, at last, honoured again. At first there
were few of the fraternity. Dr. Freind men-
tions a time when there was only one apothecary
in all London. Now [August, 1856] there are
in England and Wales about seven thousand
gentlemen who, when tyros, took their freedom
out to kill (or cure)
Where stands a structure on a rising hill,
Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams
To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames,
namely, at the Hall of the Worshipful Society
of Apothecaries in Blackfriars. Of course apoth-
ecaries do not monopolize the license to kill, or
we never should have heard of that country in
which it was a custom to confer upon the public
executioner, after he had performed his office on
a certain number of condemned people, the de-
gree of doctor apothecary.
Household Words.
ARGUMENT.
I have sometimes amused myself with con-
sidering the several methods of managing a
debate which have obtained in the world.
The first races of mankind used to dispute, as
our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of
wild logic, uncultivated by rules of art.
Socrates introduced a catechetical method of
arguing. He would ask his adversary question
upon question, till he had convinced him out
of his own mouth that his opinions were wrong.
This way of debating drives an enemy up into
a corner, seizes all the passes through which he
can make an escape, and forces him to surrender
at discretion.
Aristotle changed this method of attack, and
invented a great variety of little weapons, called
syllogisms. As in the Socratic way of dispute
you agree to everything your opponent advances,
in the Aristotelic you are still denying and con-
tradicting some part or other of what he says.
Socrates conquers you by stratagem, Aristotle
by force. The one takes the town by sap, the
other sword in hand. ADDISON :
Spectator, No. 239.
When arguments press equally in matters in-
different, the safest method is to give up ourselves
to neither. ADDISON.
Insignificant cavils may be started against
everything that is not capable of mathematical
demonstration. ADDISON.
The terms are loose and undefined ; and, what
less becomes a fair reasoner, he puts wrong and
invidious names on everything to colour a false
way of arguing. ADDISON.
It is not to be expected that every one should
guard his understanding from being imposed on
by the sophistry which creeps into most of the
hooks of argument. LOCKE.
It is good in discourse to vary and intermingle
speech of the present occasion with argument'-. ;
for it is a dull thing to tire and jade anything
too far. LORD BACON.
Some in their discourse desire rather commen-
dnjion of wit in being able to hold all arguments,
than of judgment in discerning what is true.
LORD BACON.
Whereas men have many reasons to persuade,
to use them all at once weakeneth them. For
it argueth a neediness in every one of the rea-
sons, as if one did not trust to any of them, but
fled from one to another. LORD BACON.
Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order
to appear easy and well-bred in conversation,
you may assure yourself that it requires more
wit, as well as more good humour, to improve
than to contradict the notions of another: but
if you are at any time obliged to enter on an
argument, give your reasons with the utmost
coolness and modesty, two things which scarce
ever fail of making an impression on the hear-
ers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical,
nor show either by your actions or words that
you are full of yourself, all will the more heart-
ily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you bt
pinched in your argument, you may make your
retreat with a very good grace. You were never
positive, and are now glad to be better informed.
This has made some approve the Socratic way
of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm
anything, you can hardly be caught in an ab-
surdity; and though possibly you are endeavour-
ing to bring over another to your opinion, which
is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire informa-
tion from him. BUDGELL :
Spectator, No. 197.
Lastly, if you propose to yourself the true end
of argument, which is information, it may be a
seasonable check to your passion ; for if you
search purely after truth, it will be almost indif-
ferent to you where you find it. I cannot in
this place omit an observation which I have
often made, namely, That nothing, procures a
man more esteem and less envy from the whole
company, than if he chooses the part of moder
ator, without engaging directly on either side in
a dispute. BUDGELL:
Spectator, No. 197.
Passionate expressions and vehement asser-
tions are no arguments, unless it be of the
weakness of the cause that is defended by them,
or of the man that defends it.
CHILLINGWORTH.
He could not debate anything without some
commotion, even when the argument was not
of moment. EARL OF CLARENDON.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing :
a weak defence strengthens your opponent, and
silence is less injurious than a weak reply.
COLTON: Lacon.
As the physical powers are scarcely ever
exerted to their utmost extent but in the ardoui
ARGUMENT.
of combat, so intellectual acumen has been dis-
played to the most advantage and to the most
effect in the contests of argument. The mind
of a controversialist, warmed and agitated, is
turned to all quarters, and leaves none of its
resources unemployed in the invention of argu-
ments, tries every weapon, and explores the
hidden recesses of a subject with an intense
vigilance, and an ardour which it is next to im-
possible in a calmer state of mind to command.
ROBERT HALL:
Preface to HaWs Help to Ziori's Travellers.
A metaphysical argument might have been
printed from the mouth of Sir J. Mackintosh,
unaltered and complete. That arrangement of
the parts of an abstruse subject which to others
would be a laborious art was to him a natural
suggestion and pleasurable exercise. In no in-
stance have I seen an equal power of distrib-
uting methodically a long train of argument,
adhering to his scheme, and completing it in all
its parts. SIR HENRY HOLLAND :
Mackintoshes Life.
They that are more fervent to dispute be not
always the most able to determine.
HOOKER.
Our endeavour is not so much to overthrow
them with whom we contend, as to yield them
just and reasonable causes of those things which,
for want of due consideration heretofore, they
misconceived. HOOKER.
As for probabilities, what thing was there ever
set down so agreeable with sound reason but
some probable show against it might be made ?
HOOKER.
The dexterous management of terms, and
being able to fend and prove with them, passes
for a great part of learning; but it is learning
distinct from knowledge. LOCKE.
In arguing, the opponent uses comprehensive
and equivocal terms, to involve his adversary in
the doubtfulness of his expression, and there-
fore the answer on his side makes it his play to
distinguish as much as he can. LOCKE.
I do not see how they can argue with any one
without setting down strict boundaries.
LOCKE.
It carries too great an imputation of igno-
rance, or folly, to quit and renounce former
tenets upon the offer of an argument wmch
cannot immediately be answered. LOCKE.
Men of fair minds, and not given up to the
overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty
of it; and in many cases one with amazement
hears the arguings, and is astonished at the
obstinacy, of a worthy man who yields not to
the evidence of reason. LOCKE.
The multiplying variety of arguments, es-
pecially frivolous ones, is not only lost labour,
but cumbers the memory to no purpose.
LOCKE.
Hunting after arguments to make good one
side of a question, and wholly to refuse those
which favour the other, is so far from giving
truth its due value, that it wholly debases it.
LOCKE.
An ill argument introduced with deference
will procure more credit than the profoundest
science with a rough, insolent, and noisy man-
agement. LOCKE.
The fair way of conducting a dispute is to
exhibit, one by one, the arguments of your
opponent, and, with each argument, the precise
and specific answer you are able to make to it.
PALEY.
He cannot consider the strength, poise the
weight, and discern the evidence of the clearest
argumentations where they would conclude
against his desires. SOUTH.
If your arguments be rational, offer them in
as moving a manner as the nature of the sub-
ject will admit; but beware of letting the
pathetic part swallow up the rational.
SWIFF.
The skilful disputant well knows that he
never has his enemy at more advantage than
when, by allowing the premises, he shows him
arguing wrong from his own principles.
WARBURTON.
While we are arguing with others, in order
to convince them, how graceful a thing is it,
when we have the power of the argument on
our own side, to keep ourselves from insult and
triumph ! how engaging a behaviour toward our
opponent, when we seem to part as though we
were equal in the debate, while it is evident to
all the company that the truth lies wholly on
our side !
Yet I will own there are seasons when the
obstinate and the assuming disputant should be
made to feel the force of an argument by display-
ing it in its victorious and triumphant colours.
But this is seldom to be practised so as to insult
the opposite party, except in cases where they
have shown a haughty and insufferable inso-
lence. Some persons perhaps can hardly be
taught humility without being severely humbled;
and yet where there is need of this chastisement
I had rather any other hand should be em-
ployed in it than mine.
DR. I. WATTS : Christian Morality.
Academical disputation gives vigour and
briskness to the mind thus exercised, and re-
lieves the languor of private study and medita-
tion. DR. I. WATTS.
By putting every argument, on one side and
the other, into the balance, we must form a
judgment which side preponderates.
DR. I. WATTS.
We should dwell upon the arguments, and
impress the motives of persuasion upon our
own hearts, till we feel the force of them.
DR. I. WATTS.
ARGUMENT. ARISTOCRACY. ARISTOTLE.
43
Let not :he proof of any position depend on
the positions that follow, but always on those
which precede. DR. I. WATTS.
A disputant, when he finds that his adversary
is too hard for him, with slyness turns the dis-
course. DR. I. WATTS.
Affect not little shifts and sultferfuges to avoid
the force of an argument. DR. I. WATTS.
If the opponent sees victory to incline to his
side, let him show the force of his argument,
without too importunate and petulant demands
of an answer. DR. I. WATTS.
There are persons whom to attempt to con-
vince by even the strongest reasons, and most
cogent arguments, is like King Lear putting a
letter before a man without eyes, and saying,
"Mark but the penning of it!" to which he
answers, " Were all the letters suns, I could not
see one." But it may be well worth while
sometimes to write to such a person much that
is not likely to influence him at all, if you have
an opportunity of showing it to others, as a proof
that he ought to have been convinced by it.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Negotiating.
ARISTOCRACY.
You, if you are what you ought to be, are in
my eye the great oaks that shade a country, and
perpetuate your benefits from generation to
generation. The immediate power of a Duke
of Richmond, or a Marquis of Rockingham, is
not so much of moment; but if their conduct
and example hand down their principles to their
successors, then their houses become the public
repositories and offices of record for the consti-
tution ; not like the Tower, or Roll-Chapel,
where it is searched for, and sometimes in vain,
in rotten parchments under dripping and perish-
ing walls, but in full vigour, and acting with
vital energy and power, in the character of the
leading men and natural interests of the coun-
try. BURKE:
To the Duke of Richmond, Nov. 17, 1772.
Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in
proportion as they are puffed up with personal
pride and arrogance, generally despise their
own order. One of the first symptoms they
discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition
is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they
partake with others. BURKE :
Reflections on the Revohition in France, 1 790.
When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dig-
nity to an ambition without a distinct object, and
work with low instruments and for low ends,
the whole composition becomes low and base.
Does not something like this now appear in
France? BURKE:
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Neither you, nor I, nor any fair man, can
believe that a whole nation is free from honour
and real principle; or that if these things exist
in it, they are not to be found in the men the
best born, and the best bred, and in those pos-
sessed of rank which raises them in their own
esteem, and in the esteem of others, and pos-
sessed of hereditary settlement in the same
place, which secures, with an hereditary wealth,
an hereditary inspection. That these should be
all scoundrels, and that the virtue, honour, and
public spirit of a nation should be only foun-1
in its attorneys, pettifoggers, stewards of manors,
discarded officers of police, shop-boys, clerks
of counting-houses, and rustics from the plough,
is a paradox, not of false ingenuity, but of envy
and malignity. It is an error, not of the head,
but of the heart. BURKE :
To W. Weddell, Jan. 31, 1792.
I love nobility. I should be ashamed to say
so if I did not know what it is that I love. He
alone is noble that is so reputed by those who,
by being free, are capable of forming an opin-
ion. Such a people are alone competent to
bestow a due estimation upon rank and titles.
He is noble who has a priority amongst free-
men ; not he who has a sort of wild liberty
among slaves. BURKE:
To the King of Poland, probably March, 1792.
Amongst the masses even in revolutions
aristocracy must ever exist; destroy it in no-
bility, and it becomes centred in the rich and
powerful House of the Commons. Pull them
down, and it still survives in the master and
foreman of the workshop. GUIZOT.
ARISTOTLE.
The celebrity of the great classical writers is
confined within no limits except those which
separate civilized from savage man. Their
works are the common property of every pol-
ished nation ; they have furnished subjects for
the painter, and models for the poet. In the
minds of the educated classes throughout Eu-
rope, their names are indissolubly associated
with the endearing recollections of childhood,
the old school-room, the dog-eared gram-
mar, the first prize, the tears so often shed
and so quickly dried. So great is the veneration
with which they are regarded, that even the
editors and commentators who perform the low-
est menial offices to their memory are consid-
ered, like the equerries and chamberlains of
sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in
the table of literary precedence. It is, therefore,
somewhat singular that their productions should
so rarely have been examined on just and philo-
sophical principles of criticism.
The ancient writers themselves afford us but
little assistance. When they particularize, they
are commonly trivial : when they would general-
ize, they become indistinct. An exception must,
indeed, be made in favour of Aristotle. Both
44
ARISTOTLE. ARMIES.
in analysis and in combination, that great man
was without a rival. No philosopher has ever
possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either
of separating established systems into their pri-
mary elements, or of connecting detached phe-
nomena in harmonious systems. He was the
great fashioner of the intellectual chaos ; he
changed its darkness into light, and its discord
into order. He brought to literary researches
the same vigour and amplitude of mind to which
both physical and metaphysical science are so
greatly indebted. His fundamental principles
of criticism are excellent. To cite only a single
instance : the doctrine which he established,
that poetry is an imitative art, when justly under-
stood, is to the critic what the compass is to the
navigator. With it he may venture upon the
most extensive excursions. Without it he must
creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself
in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the
guidance of an occasional star. It is a discov-
ery which changes a caprice into a science.
The general propositions of Aristotle are val-
uable. But the merit of the superstructure bears
no proportion to that of the foundation. This
is partly to be ascribed to the character of the
philosopher, who, though qualified to do all that
could be done by the resolving and combining
powers of the understanding, seems not to have
possessed much of sensibility or imagination.
Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency
of materials. The great works of genius which
then existed were not either sufficiently numer-
ous or sufficiently varied to enable any man to
form a perfect code of literature. To require
that a critic should conceive classes of compo-
sition which had never existed, and then inves-
tigate their principles, would be as unreasonable
as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who ex-
pected his magicians first to tell him his dream
and then to interpret it.
With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the
most enlightened and profound critic of an-
tiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the
same exquisite subtilty, or the same vast compre-
hension. But he had access to a much greater
number of specimens; and he had devoted him-
self, as it appears, more exclusively to the study
of elegant literature. His peculiar judgments
are of more value than his general principles.
HP is only the historian of literature. Aristotle
.s its philosopher. LORD MACAULAY :
On the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824.
ARMIES.
Number itself importeth not much in armies,
where the people are of weak courage : for, as
Virgil says, it never troubles a wolf how many
the sheep be. LORD BACON.
If a state run most to noblemen and gentle-
men, and that the husbandmen be but as their
work-folks and labourers, you may have a good
cavalry, but never good stable foot.
LORD BACON.
When war becomes the trade of a separate
class, the least dangerous course left to a gov-
ernment is to form that class into a standing
army. It is scarcely possible that men can pass
their lives in the service of one state, without
feeling some interest in its greatness. Its vic-
tories are their victories. Its defeats are their
defeats. The contract loses something of its
mercantile character. The services of the sol-
dier are considered as the effects of patriotic
zeal, his pay as the tribute of national gratitude.
To betray the power which employs him, to be
even remiss in its service, are in his eyes the
most atrocious and degrading of crimes.
When the princes and commonwealths of Italy
began to use hired troops, their wisest course
would have been to form separate military estab-
lishments. Unhappily, this was not done. The
mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead of
being attached to the service of different powers,
were regarded as the common property of all.
The connection between the state and its defend-
ers was reduced to the most simple and naked
traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his
weapons, his strength, and his experience, into
the market. Whether the King of Naples or
the Duke of Milan, the Pope, or the Signory
of Florence, struck the bargain, was to him a
matter of perfect indifference. He was for the
highest wages and the longest term. When the
campaign for which he had contracted was fin-
ished, there was neither law nor punctilio to
prevent him from instantly turning his arms
against his late masters. The soldier was alto-
gether disjoined from the citizen and the subject.
The natural consequences followed. Left to
the conduct of men who neither loved those
whom they defended, nor hated those whom they
opposed, who were often bound by stronger ties
to the army against which they fought than to
the state which they served, who lost by the
termination of the conflict, and gained by its
prolongation, war completely changed its char-
acter. Every man came into the field of battle
impressed with the knowledge that, in a few
days, he might be taking the pay of the power
against which he was then employed, and fight-
ing by the side of his enemies against his asso-
ciates. The strongest interests and the strongest
feelings concurred to mitigate the hostility of
those who had lately been brethren in arms, and
who might soon be brethren in arms once more.
Their common profession was a bond of union
not to be forgotten even when they were en
gaged in the service of contending parties.
Hence it was that operations, languid and inde-
cisive beyond any recorded in history, marches
and counter-marches, pillaging expeditions and
blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally
bloodless combats, make up the military history
of Italy during the course of nearly two cen-
turies. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sun-
set. A great victory is won. Thousands of
prisoners are taken; and hardly a life is lost.
A pitched battle seems to have been really less
dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult. Cour-
age was now no longer necessary even to th
ARROGANCE. ART.
45
military character. Men grew old in camps,
and acquired the highest renown by their war-
like achievements, without being once required
to face serious danger.
LORD MACAUI.AY :
Machiavelli, March, 1827.
ARROGANCE.
Life is, in fact, a system of relations rather
than a positive and independent existence; and
he who would be happy himself, and make
others happy, must carefully preserve these rela-
tions. He cannot stand apart in surly and
haughty egotism : let him learn that he is as
much dependent on others as others are on him.
A law of action and reaction prevails, from
which he can be no more exempt than his more
modest fellow-men ; and, sooner or later, arro-
gance, in whatever sphere of the intellectual or
moral development it may obtain, will, nay
must, meet its appropriate punishment. The
laws of nature, and the demonstrations of math-
ematics, are not more certain than those of our
spiritual life, whether manifested in the individ-
ual or in society. Household Words.
But this evil of isolation belongs not exclu-
sively to the one transcendent genius, or to the
favoured few who have gained the highest emi-
nences of thought or labour. Those who have
advanced only a Httle way beyond their acquaint-
ance in literary, artistic, or scientific attainments,
are not a little proud of their acquisitions, and
sometimes set up for much greater people than
they really are. They claim privileges to which
they have but a very slender title, if any, and
become boastful, presumptuous, and overbearing.
Alas ! in the crudity of their knowledge, they
are unaware of the lamentable extent of their
ignorance, as also of the fatal boundary which
necessarily limits the information of the most
learned and the most knowing. They have not
been taught with how much truth Socrates
made the celebrated affirmation that " All he
knew was that he knew nothing."
Household Words.
ART.
There is a great affinity between designing
and poetry ; for the Latin poets, and the design-
ers of the Roman medals, lived very near one
another, and were bred up to the same relish
for wit and fancy. ADDISON.
Arts and sciences in one and the same cen-
tury have arrived at great perfection ; and no
wonder, since every age has a kind of universal
genius, which inclines those that live in it to
some particular studies; the work then, being
pushed on by many hands, must go forward.
DRYDEN.
The study of art possesses this great and pe-
culiar charm, that it is absolutely unconnected
with the struggles and contests of ordinary life,
By private interests, by political questions, men
are deeply divided and set at variance; but
beyond and above all such party strifes they are
attracted and united by a taste for the beautiful
in art. It is a taste at once engrossing and un-
selfish, which may be indulged without effort,
and yet has the power of exciting the deepest
emotions, a taste able to exercise and to grat-
ify both the nobler and softer parts of our na-
ture, the imagination and the judgment, love
of emotion and power of reflection, the enthu-
siasm and the critical faculty, the senses and
the reason. GuiZOT.
The natQTal progress of the works of men i?
from rudeness to convenience, from convenience
to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
The enemy of art is the enemy of nature,
Art is nothing but the highest sagacity and ex-
ertion of human nature; and what nature will
he honour who honours not the human ?
LAVATER.
In no circumstance whatever can man be
comfortable without art. The butterfly is inde-
pendent of art, though it is only in sunshine
that it can be happy. The beasts of the field
can roam about by day, and couch by night on
the cold earth, without danger to health or sense
of misfortune. But man is miserable and speed-
ily lost so soon as he removes from the precincts
of human art, without his shoes, without his
clothes, without his dog and his gun, without
an inn or a cottage to shelter him by night.
Nature is worse to him than a stepmother, he
cannot love her; she is a desolate and howling
wilderness. He is not a child of nature like a
hare. She does not provide him a banquet and
a bed upon every little knoll, every green spot
of earth. She persecutes him to death if he do
not return to that sphere of art to which he be-
longs, and out of which she will show him no
mercy, but be unto him a demon of despair and
a hopeless perdition. RUSKIN.
The power, whether of painter or poet, to
describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing,
depends upon its being to him not an ideal but
a real thing. No man ever did or ever will
work well, but either from actual sight, or sight
of faith. RUSKIN.
Necessity and common sense produced all
the common arts, which the plain folks who
practised them were not idle enough to record.
HORACE WALPOLE.
The object of science is knowledge; the
objects of art are works. In art, truth is the
means to an end; in science, it is the only end.
Hence the practical arts are not to be classed
among the sciences. WHEWELL.
4 6
ASSOCIATION. ASTROLOGY. ASTRONOMY.
ASSOCIATION.
Yes, Man is the slave of association ; and if
there ever once has existed an argumentum ad
hominem for or against a thing or a person, it is
more than probable that, in exact accordance to
the personal argument, we shall love or hate
that thing or person forever after. An infantine
surfeit of oysters may so extend its influence
over a whole life as to make us forever regard
with aversion that admirable mollusc; a whip-
ping at school, while we were learning Greek
or English history, may, according to the period
it was inflicted in, impart to us doubts of the
justice of Aristides, or absolute nausea respect-
ing the patriotic virtue of Hampden. On the
other hand, it may be questioned whether the
eulogists of Saint Dunstan, of Bloody Queen
Mary, and other execrated notabilities, may not
have had holidays and sugar-plums, or a plum-
cake from home, just at the moment when they
were successfully getting over the Dunstan or
Mary period. Hotisehold Words.
ASTROLOGY.
This considered together with a strict account
and critical examen of reason, will also distract
the witty determinations of astrology.
SIR T. BROWNE.
He strictly adviseth not to begin to sow be-
fore the setting of the stars ; which, notwith-
standing, without injury to agriculture cannot
be observed in England.
SIR T. BROWNE : Vulgar Errors.
Towards the latter end of this month, Sep-
tember, Charles will begin to recover his perfect
health, according to his nativity, which, casting
it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hith-
erto have happened accordingly to the very time
that I predicted them. JOHN DRYDEN :
To his Sons, Sept. 3, 1697.
Astrology, however, against which so much
of the satire [in Hudibras] is directed was not
more the folly of Puritans than of others. It
had in that tifrie a very extensive dominion.
Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds
which ought to have rejected it with contempt.
In hazardous undertakings care was taken to
begin under the influence of a propitious planet;
and when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook
Castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour
would be found most favourable to an escape.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Btitler.
Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to fore-
tell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no fore-
sight in what concerns themselves.
L' ESTRANGE.
Do not Christians and Heathens, Jews and
Gentiles, poets and philosophers, unite in allow-
ing the starry influences ?
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Their skill in astronomy dwindled into that
which, by a great catachresis, is called judicial
astrology. STILLINGFLEET.
Astrological prayers seem to me to be built
on as good reason as the predictions.
STILLINGFLEET.
Astrologers with an old paltry cant, and a few
pot-hooks for planets, to amuse the vulgar, have
too long been suffered to abuse the world.
SWIFT.
I know the learned think of the art of as-
trology that the stars do not force the actions ct
wills of men. SWIFT.
A wise man shall overrule his stars, and have
a greater influence upon his own content than
all the constellations and planets of the firma-
ment. JEREMY TAYLOR :
Ride of Holy Living.
Whenever the word influence occurs in our
English poetry, down to comparatively a modern
date, there is always more or less remote allu-
sion to the skyey or planetary influences sup-
posed to be exercised by the heavenly bodies
upon men. R. C. TRENCH.
W T e speak of a person zs jovial, or saturnine,
or mercurial. Jovial, as being born under the
planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyful-
lest star and the happiest augury of all. A
gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as be-
ing born under the planet Saturn, who was con-
sidered to make those that owned his influence,
and were born when he was in the ascendant,
grave and stern as himself. Another we call
mercurial, that is light-hearted, as those born
under the planet Mercury were accounted to be.
R. C. TRENCH.
ASTRONOMY.
When a man spends his life among the stars
and planets, or lays out a twelvemonth on the
pots of the sun, however noble his speculations
may be, they are very apt to fall into burlesque.
ADDISON.
Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of
the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples
to learn, but for reasons far removed from com-
mon habits of thinking. " Shall we set down
astronomy," says Socrates, " among 'the subjects
of study ?" [Plato's Republic, Book VII.] " I
think so," answers his young friend Glaucon :
to know something about the seasons, the
months, and the years is of use for military pur-
poses, as well as for agriculture and navigation."
" It amuses me," says Socrates, " to" see how
afraid you are lest the common herd of men
should accuse you of recommending useless
studies." He then proceeds, in that pure and
magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Ju-
piter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to ex-
plain that the use of astronomy is not to add to
the vulgar comforts of life, but to assist in laising
ASTR ONOMY. A THEISM.
47
the mind to the contemplation of things which
are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone.
The knowledge of the actual motions of the
heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little
value. The appearances which make the sky
beautiful at night arc, he tells us, like the figures
which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere
examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We
must get beyond them ; we must neglect them ;
we must attain to an astronomy which is as in-
dependent of the actual stars as geometrical
truth is independent of the lines of an ill-drawn
diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if
not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon com-
pared to the ox of Prometheus [De Augmentis,
Lib. 3, cap. 4], a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed
with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing
nothing to eat. He complained ihat astronomy
had, to its great injury, been separated from
natural philosophy, of which it was one of the
noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain
of mathematics. The world stood in need, he
said, of a very different astronomy, of a living
astronomy [Astronomia viva], of an astronomy
which should set forth the nature, the motion,
and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as
they really are. [" Que substantiam et motum
et influxum caelestium, prout re vera sunt, pro-
ponat." Compare this language with Plato's,
" To 6'ev TV ovpavy eadopev."]
LORD MACAULAY :
Lord Bacon, July, 1837.
Against filling the heavens with fluid me-
diums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great
objection arises from the regular and very last-
ing motions of the planets and comets in all
manner of courses through the heavens.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
ATHEISM.
After having treated of these false zealots in
religion, I cannot forbear mentioning a mon-
strous species of men, who one would not think
had any existence .in nature, were they not to
be met with in ordinary conversation I mean
the zealots in atheism. One would fancy that
these men, though they fall short, in every other
respect, of those who make a profession of re-
ligion, would at least outshine them in this par-
ticular, and be exempt from that single fault
which seems to grow out of the imprudent fer-
vours of religion. But so it is, that infidelity is
propagated with as much fierceness and conten-
tion, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of
mankind depended on it.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 185.
Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a
Supreme Being, and consequently of a future
state, under whatsoever titles it shelter itself,
may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of
this cheerfulness of temper. There is some-
thing so particularly gloomy and offensive to
human nature in the prospect of non-existence,
that I cannot but wonder, with many excellent
writers, how it is possible for a man to outlive
the expectation of it.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 381.
A wise man, that lives up to the principles of
reason and virtue, if one considers him in his
solitude, as in taking in the system of the uni-
verse, observing the mutual dependence and
harmony by which the whole frame of it hangs
together, beating down his passions, or swelling
his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Provi-
dence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an
intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror
amidst all the pomps and solemnities of a
triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more
ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retire-
ment. His mind is incapable of rapture or
elevation. He can only consider himself as an
insignificant figure in a landscape, and wander-
ing up and down in a field or a meadow, under
the same terms as the meanest animals about
him, and as subject to as total a mortality as
they; with this aggravation, that he is the only
one amongst them who lies under the apprehen-
sion of it !
In distresses, he must be of all creatures the
most helpless and forlorn ; he feels the whole
pressure of a present calamity, without being
relieved by the memory of anything past, or the
prospect of anything that is to come. Annihi-
lation is the greatest blessing that he proposes
to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only
refuge he can fly to. But, if you would behold
one of these gloomy miscreants in his poorest
figure, you must consider him under the terrors
or at the approach of death.
ADDISON and STEELE: Taller, No. in.
I had rather believe all the fables in the
legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than
that this universal frame is without a mind :
and therefore God never wrought miracles to
convince atheism, because his ordinary works
convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in
philosophy bringeth men's minds about to re-
ligion : for while the mind of man looketh upon
second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest
in them, and go no farther; but when it be-
holdeth the chain of them confederate, and
linked together, it must needs fly to providence
and Deity. LORD BACON :
Essay XV2L: Of Atheism.
They that deny a God destroy a man's no-
bility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts
by his body ; and if he be not of kin to Gr.d
by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creatuic.
It destroys, likewise, magnanimity, and the
raising human nature. LORD BACON :
Essay XVIL: Of Atheism.
Not that we are so low and base as their
atheism would depress us ; not walking statues
of clay, not the sons of brute earth, whose final
inheritance is death and corruption.
BENTLEY.
ATHEISM.
There are several topics used against atheism
and idolatry ; such as the visible marks of divine
wisdom and goodness in the works of the
creation, the vital union of souls with matter,
and the admirable structure of animate bodies.
BENTLEY.
The mechanical atheist, though you grant
him his laws of mechanism, is inextricably
puzzled and baffled with the first formation of
animals. BENTLEY.
We may proceed yet further, with the atheist;
and convince him that not only his principle is
absurd, but his consequences also as absurdly
deduced from it. BENTLEY.
Whatsoever atheists think on, or whatsoever
they look on, all do administer some reasons
for suspicion and diffidence, lest possibly they
may be in the wrong ; and then it is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God !
BENTLEY.
No atheist, as such, can be a true friend, an
affectionate relation, or a loyal subject.
BENTLEY.
If the atheists would live up to the ethics of
Epicurus himself, they would make few or no
proselytes from the Christian religion.
BENTLEY.
It is well known, both from ancient and
modern experience, that the very boldest athe-
ists, out of their debauches and company, when
they chance to be surprised with solitude or
sickness, are the most suspicious, timorous, and
despondent wretches in the world.
BENTLEY.
All creatures ignorant of their own natures,
could not universally in the whole kind, and in
every climate and country, without any differ-
ence in the whole world, tend to a certain end,
if some overruling wisdom did not preside over
the world and guide them : and if the creatures
have a Conductor, they have a Creator; all
things are "turned round about by his counsel,
that they may do whatsoever he commands
them, upon the face of the world in the earth."
So that in this respect the folly of atheism ap-
pears. Without the owning a God, no account
can be given of those actions of creatures, that
are an imitation of reason.
CHARNOCK : Attribtites.
A secret atheism, or a partial atheism, is the
spring of all the wicked practices in the world:
Ihe disorders of the life spring from the ill dis-
positions of the heart.
For the first, every atheist is a grand fool. If
he were not a fool, he would not imagine a
thing so contrary to the stream of the universal
reason of the world, contrary to the rational
dictates of his own soul, and contrary to the
testimony of every creature, and link, in the
chain of creation; if he were not a fool, he
would not strip himself of humanity, and de-
grade himself lower than the most despicable
brute. CHARNOCK : Attributes.
As wlien a man comes into a palace, built
according to the exactest rule of art, and with
an unexceptionable conveniency for the inhab-
itants, he would acknowledge both the being |
and skill of the builder; so whosoever shall
observe the disposition of all the parts of the
world, their connection, comeliness, the variety
of seasons, the swarms of different creatures,
and the mutual offices they render to one an-
other, cannot conclude less, than it was con-
trived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite
power, and governed by infinite wisdom. None
can imagine a ship to be orderly conduced
without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to
perform their several functions without a wise
guide ; considering the members of the body
cannot perform theirs, without the active pres-
ence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool
to deny that which every creature in his consti-
tution asserts, and thereby renders himself
unable to give a satisfactory account of that
constant uniformity in the motions of the crea-
tures CHARNOCK: Attributes.
History doth not reckon twenty professed
atheists in all ages in the compass of the whole
world : and we have not the name of any one
absolute atheist upon record in Scripture : yet it
is questioned, whether any of them, noted in
history with that infamous name, were down-
right deniers of the existence of God, but rather
because they disparaged the deities commonly
worshipped by the nations where they lived, as
being of a clearer reason to discern that those
qualities, vulgarly attributed to their gods, as
lust and luxury, wantonness and quarrels, were
unworthy of the nature of a god.
CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Beyond all credulity is the credulousness of
atheists, who believe that chance could make
the world, when it cannot build a house.
DR. S. CLARKE.
A blind or deaf man has infinitely more rea-
son to deny the being, or the possibility of the
being, of light or sounds than an atheist can
have to deny or doubt of the existence of God.
DR. S. CLARKE.
An atheist, if you take his word for it, is a
very despicable mortal. Let us describe him
by his tenet, and copy him a little from his own
original. He is, then, no better than a heap of
organized dust, a stalking machine, a speaking
head without a soul in it. His thoughts are
bound by the laws of motion, his actions are all
prescribed. He has no more liberty than the
current of a stream or the blast of a tempest ;
and where there is no choice there can be no
merit. JEREMY COLLIER.
Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride ;
of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good
eating and ill living.
It is the plague of society, the corrupttr of
ma mers, and the underminer of property.
JEREMY COLLIFJU
A THEISM. A THENS.
49
It is a fine observation of Plato in his Laws
lhat atheism is a disease of the soul before it
becomes an error of the understanding.
FLEMING.
Atheists are confounded with Pantheists, such
as Xenophanes among the ancients, or Spinoza
and Schilling among the moderns, who, instead
of denying God, absorb everything into him.
FLEMING.
Those that would be genteelly learned need
not purchase it at the dear rate of being atheists.
GLANVILL.
Those the impiety of whose lives makes them
regret a deity, and secretly wish there were
none, will greedily listen to atheistical notions.
GLANVILL.
Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim
never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is
an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally
hostile to every useful restraint and to every
virtuous affection; that leaving nothing above
us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken ten-
derness, it wages war with heaven and with
earth : its first object is to dethrone God, its next
to destroy man.
ROBERT HALL : Modern Infidelity.
The atheists taken notice of among the an-
cienls are left branded upon the records of
history. LOCKE.
Men are atheistical because they are first
vicious; and question the truth of Christianity
because they hate the practice. SOUTH.
Though he were really a speculative atheist,
yet if he would but proceed rationally he could
,iot however be a practical atheist, nor live
without God in this world. SOUTH.
When men live as if there were no God, it
becomes expedient for them that there should
be none ; and then they endeavour to persuade
themselves so. TILLOTSON.
The atheist can pretend no obligation of con-
science why he should dispute against religion.
TILLOTSON.
The true reason why any man is an atheist is
because he is a wicked man : religion would
curb him in his lusts ; and therefore he casts it
off, and puts all the scorn upon it he' can.
TILLOTSON.
The atheist, in case things should fall out
contrary to his belief or expectation, hath made
Do provision for this case; if contrary to his
confidence it should prove in the issue that there
Is a God, the man is lost and undone forever.
TILLOTSON.
If the atheist, when he dies, should find that
his soul remains, how will this man be amazed
and blanked ! TILLOTSON.
It is the common interest of mankind to
punish all those who would seduce men to
atheism. TILLOTSON.
4
The system, then, of reasoning from our own
conjectures as to the necessity of the Most High
doing so and so, tends to lead a man to proceed
from the rejection of his own form of Chris-
tianity to a rejection of revelation altogether.
But does it stop here? Does not the same
system lead naturally to Atheism also ? Expe-
rience shows that that consequence, which reason
might have anticipated, does often actually take
place. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Atheutn
ATHENS.
Of remote countries and past times he [John-
son] talked with wild and ignorant presumption.
" The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes,"
he said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a people of brutes,
a barbarous people." In conversation with Sir
Adam Ferguson he used similar language.
" The boasted Athenians," he said, " were barba-
rians. The mass of every people must be bar-
barous where there is no printing." The fact
was this : he saw that a Londoner who could
not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow ;
he saw that great refinement of taste and activ-
ity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner
who had not read much; and, because it was by
means of books that people acquired almost all
their knowledge in the society with which he
was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of
the strongest and clearest evidence, that the
human mind can be cultivated by means of
books alone. An Athenian citizen might pos-
sess very few volumes; and the largest library
to which he had access might be much less
valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court.
But the Athenian might pass every morning
in conversation with Socrates, and might hear
Pericles speak four or five times every month.
He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristo-
phanes : he walked amidst the friezes ot Phidias
and the paintings of Zeuxis : he knew by heart
the choruses of yEschylus : he heard the rhapso-
dist at the corner of the street reciting the shield
of Achilles or the death of Argus; he was a
legislator, conversant with high questions of
alliance, revenue, and war : he was a soldier,
trained under a liberal and generous discipline :
he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh
the effect of opposite arguments. These things
were in themselves an education ; an education
eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or
profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the
perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the
expression, and politeness to the manners. All
this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not
improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's
opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who
made his mark; much such a person as black
Frank before he went to school ; and far inferior
to a parish clerk or a printer's devil.
LORD MACAULAY:
Crater's Edition of BosivelVs Johnson*
Sept. 1831.
A THENS.A TTENTION.
If we consider merely the subtlety of disqui-
sition, the force of imagination, the perfect
energy and elegance of expression, which char-
acterize the great works of Athenian history,
we must pronounce them intrinsically most val-
uable ; but what shall we say when we reflect
that from hence have sprung directly or indi-
rectly all the noblest creations of the human
intellect; that from hence were the vast accom-
plishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero;
the withering fire of Juvenal ; the plastic im-
agination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes;
the comprehension of Bacon ; the wit of Butler ;
the supreme and universal excellence of Shak-
&peare ? All the triumphs of truth and genius
over prejudice and power, in every country and
in every age, have been the triumphs, Of Athens.
Wherever a few great minds have made a stand
against violence and fraud, in the cause of lib-
erty and reason, there has been her spirit in the
midst of them ; inspiring, encouraging, con-
soling; by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by
the restless bed of Pascal ; in the tribune of Mi-
rabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold
of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence
on private happiness ? Who shall say how many
thousands have been made wiser, happier, and
better, by those pursuits in which she has taught
mankind to engage : to how many the studies
which took their rise from her have been wealth
in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in
sickness, society in solitude? Her power is
indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in
'he field of battle, in the schools of philosophy.
But these are not her glory. Wherever litera-
ture consoles sorrow, or assuages pain, wher-
ever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with
wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark
house and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in
its noble form, the immortal influence of Athens.
LORD MACAULAY :
On Mitford's History of Greece, Nov. 1824.
The dervise in the Arabian tale did not hesi-
tate to abandon to his comrade the camels with
their load of jewels and gold, while he retained
the casket of that mysterious juice which en-
abled him to behold at one glance all the hidden
riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggera-
tion to say that no external advantage is to be
compared with that purification of the intellect-
ual eye which gives us to contemplate the infi-
nite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded
treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shape-
less ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the
gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her
power have for more than twenty centuries been
annihilated ; her people have degenerated into
timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jar-
gon ; her temples have been given up to the
successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and
Scotchmen ; but her intellectual empire is im-
perishable. And when those who have rivalled
her greatness shall have shared her fate; when
civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their
abode in distant continents; when the sceptre
shall have passed ?way from England; when,
perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in
vain labour to decipher on some mouldering
pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall
hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen
idol over the ruined dome of our proudest tem-
ple ; and shall see a single naked fisherman
wash his nets in the river of ten thousand
masts; her influence and her glory will still
survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt ftom
mutability and decay, immortal as the intellect-
ual principle from which they derived their
origin, and over which they exercise their con
trol. LORD MACAULAY :
On the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824.
Books, however, were the least part of the
education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for a
moment, transport ourselves in thought to that
glorious city. Let us imagine that we are en-
tering its gates in the time of its power and
glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico.
All are gazing with delight at the entablature;
for Phidias is putting up the frieze. We turn
into another street ; a rhapsodist is reciting
there : men, women, children are thronging
round him: the tears are running down their
cheeks: their eyes are fixed: their very breath
is still ; for he is telling how Priam fell at the
feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands the
terrible, the murderous which had slain so
many of his sons. We enter the public place ;
there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward,
with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation.
Socrates is pitted against the famous atheist from
Ionia, and has just brought him to a contradic-
tion in terms. But we are interrupted. The
herald is crying, " Room for the Prytanes !"
The general assembly is to meet. The people
are swarming in on every side. Proclamation
is made " Who wishes to speak ?" There is
a shout, and a clapping of hands: Pericles is
mounting the stand. Then for a play of Soph-
ocles ; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know
of no modern university which has so excellent
a system of education.
LORD MACAULAY:
On the Athenian Orators.
ATTENTION.
Our minds are so constructed that we can
keep the attention fixed on a particular object
until we have, as it were, looked all around it ;
and the mind that possesses this faculty in the
highest degree of perfection will take cogni-
zance of relations of which another mind has
no perception. It is this, much more than any
difference in the abstract power of reasoning,
which constitutes the vast difference between the
minds of different individuals. This is the his-
tory alike of the poetic genius and of the genius
of discovery in science. " I keep the subject,"
said Sir Isaac Newton, " constantly before me,
and wait until the dawning* open by little and
little into a full light." It was thus that after
long meditation he was led to the invention of
A TTENTION.A UTHORITY.
fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern
discovc-ry of the combustibility of tire diamond.
It was thus that Harvey discovered the circula-
tion of the blood, and that those views were
suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of
that grand series of experimental researches
which terminated in the decomposition of the
earths and alkalies. SIR B. BRODIE.
In the power of fixing the attention, the most
precious of the intellectual habits, mankind dif-
fer greatly; but every man possesses some, and
it will increase the more it is exerted. He who
exercises no discipline over himself in this re-
spec*: acquires such a volatility of mind, such a
vagrancy of imagination, as dooms him to be
the sport of every mental vanity : it is impossi-
ble such a man should attain to true wisdom.
If we cultivate, on the contrary, a habit of at-
tention, it will become natural; thought will
strike its roots deep, and we shall, by degrees,
experience no difficulty in following the track
of the longest connected discourse.
ROBERT HALL : On Hearing the Word.
To view attention as a special state of intelli-
gence, and to distinguish it from consciousness,
is utterly inept. SIR W. HAMILTON.
It is a way of calling a man a fool when no
heed is given to what he says.
L'ESTRANGE.
By attention ideas are registered in the mem-
ory. LOCKE.
Some ideas which have more than once of-
fered themselves to the senses have yet been little
taken notice of; the mind being either heedless,
as in children, or otherwise employed, as in
men. LOCKE.
He will have no more clear ideas of all the
operations of his mind, than he will have all the
particular ideas of any landscape or clock, who
will not turn his eyes to it and with attention
heed all the parts of it. LOCKE.
This difference of intention and remission of
the mind in thinking every one has experienced
in himself. LOCKE.
If we would weigh and keep in our minds
what we are considering, that would instruct us
when we should, or should not, branch into
distinctions. LOCKE.
When the mind has brought itself to attention
it will be able to cope with difficulties and mas-
ter them, and then it may go on roundly.
LOCKE.
I have discovered no other way to keep our
thoughts close to their business, but by frequent
attention and application getting the habit of
attention and application. LOCKE.
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
SWIFT.
There is not much difficulty in confining the
mind to contemplate what we have a great de-
siie to know. DR. I. WATTS.
AUTHORITY.
Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either
by the prejudice of education, or by a deference
to the judgment of those who, perhaps, in their
own hearts, disapprove the opinions which they
industriously spread among the multitude.
ADDISON.
The practice of all ages and all countries
hath been to do honour to those who are in-
vested with public authority. ATTERBURY.
Three means to fortify belief are experience,
reason, and authority : of these the more potent
is authority; for belief upon reason, or experi-
ence, will stagger. LORD BACON.
With regard to authority, it is the greatest
weakness to attribute infinite credit to particu-
lar authors, and to refuse his own judgment to
Time, the author of all authors, and therefore
of all authority. LORD BACON.
The vices of authority are chiefly four: de-
lays, corruption, roughness, and facility. For
delays give easy access ;- keep times appointed ;
go through with that which is in hand, and in-
terlace not business but of necessity. For cor-
ruption doth not only bind thine own hands or
thy servants from taking, but bind the hands of
suitors also from offering: for integrity used
doth the one; but integrity professed, and with
a manifest detestation of bribery, doth the other ;
and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion.
Whosoever is found variable, and changeth
manifestly without manifest cause, giveth sus-
picion of corruption : therefore, always, when
thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it
plainly, and declare it, together with the rea-
sons that move thee to change, and do not think
to steal it. A servant or a favourite, if he be
inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem,
is commonly thought but a by-way to close cor-
ruption. For roughness, it is a needless cause
of discontent : severity breedeth fear, but rough-
ness breedeth hate. Even reproofs from author-
ity ought to be grave, and not taunting. As for
facility, it is worse than bribery ; for bribes come
but now and then ; but if importunity or idle
respects lead a man, he shall never be without ;
as Solomon saith, " To respect persons it is not
good, for such a man will transgress for a piece
of bread." LORD BACON :
Essay XL, Of Great Place.
An argument from authority is but a weaker
kind of proof; it being but a topical probation,
and an inartificial argument, depending on naked
asseveration. SIR T. BROWNE.
Reasons of things are rather to be taken by
weight than tale. JEREMY COLLIER.
With respect to the authority of great names, it
should be remembered that he alone deserves to
have any weight or influence with posterity, who
has shown himself superior to the particular and
predominant error of his o-wn times ; who, like
the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual
sun before its beams have reached the horizon
A UTHORITY.A UTHORS.
of common minds ; who, standing, like Socrates,
on l he apex of wisdom, has removed from his
eyes all film of earthly dross, and has foreseen
a purer law, a nobler system, a brighter order
of things; in short, a promised land! which,
fike Moses on the top of Pisgah, he is permitted
to survey, and anticipate for others, without
being himself allowed either to enter or to
enjoy. COLTON : Lacon.
Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in
favour of whatever is countenanced by antiquity,
enforced by authority, and recommended by
custom. The pleasure of acquiescing in the
decision of others is by most men so much pre-
ferred to the toil and hazard of inquiry, and so
few are either able or disposed to examine for
themselves, that the voice of law will generally
be taken for the dictates of justice.
ROBERT HALL :
Fragment, On Village Preaching.
By a man's authority we are to understand the
lorce which his word hath for the assurance of
another's mind that buildeth on it.
HOOKER.
For men to be tied, and led by authority, as
it were with a kind of captivity of judgment;
and though there be reason to the contrary, not
to listen unto it. HOOKER.
Number may serve your purpose with the
ignorant, who measure by tale, and not by
weight. HOOKER.
The reason why the simpler sort are moved
with authority, is the conscience of their own
ignorance. HOOKER.
Whoever backs his tenets with authorities
thinks he ought to carry the cause, and is ready
to style it impudence in any one who shall stand
out. LOCKE.
The constraint of receiving and holding opin-
ions by authority was rightly called imposition.
LOCKE.
We cannot expect that any one should readily
quit his own opinion and embrace ours, with a
blind resignation to an authority which the
understanding acknowledges not. LOCKE.
It is conceit rather than understanding if it
must be under the restraint of receiving and
holding opinions by the authority of anything
but their own perceived evidence. LOCKE.
If the opinions of others whom we think
well of be a ground of assent, men have
reason to be Heathers in Japan, Mahometans
in Tuikey, Papists in Spain, and Protestants in
England. LOCKE.
There is nothing sooner overthrows a weak
uead than opinion of authority ; like too strong
a liquor for a frail glass. SIR P. SIDNEY.
An evil mind in authority doth not follow the
sway of the desires already within it, but frames
to itself new diseases not before thought of.
SIR P. SIDNEY.
Authority is by nothing so much strengthened
and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily
distrusts the things which he and all men have
Deen always bred up to. SIR W. TEMPLE,
Ten thousand things there are which we be-
ieve merely upon the authority or credit of those
vho have spoken or written of them.
DR. I WATTS.
The will of our Maker, whether discovered
by reason or revelation, carries the highest
authority with it; a conformity or non-conform-
ity to it determine their actions to be morally
good or evil. DR. I. WATTS : Logic.
AUTHORS.
Among the mutilated poets of antiquity there:
is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those
of Sappho. They give us a taste of her way of
writing, which is perfectly conformable with
that extraordinary character we find of her in
the remarks of those great critics who were
conversant with her works when they were
entire. One may see by what is left of them
that she followed nature in all her thoughts,
without descending to those little points, con-
ceits, and turns of wit with which many of our
modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her
soul seems to have been made up of love and
poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth,
and described it in all its symptoms. She is
called by ancient authors the tenth muse; and
by Plutarch is compared to Cacus, the son of
Vulcan, who breathed out nothing but flame
I do not know by the character that is given ol
her works, whether it is not for the benefit ol
mankind that they are lost. They are filled
with such bewitching tenderness and rapture,
that it might have been dangerous to have given
them a reading.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 223.
Among the English, Shakspeare has incom-
parably excelled all others. That noble extrava-
gance of fancy, which he had in so great per-
fection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this
weak superstitious part of his reader's imagina-
tion; and made him capable of succeeding
where he had nothing to support him besides
the strength of his own genius. There is some-
thing so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches
of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like im
aginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking
them natural, though we have no rule by which
to judge of them, and must confess, if there are
such beings in the world, it looks highly prob-
able they should talk and act as he has repre-
sented them.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 419.
It is a fine simile in one of Mr. Congreve's
prologues which compares a writer to a buttering
gamester that stakes all his winning upon one
cast ; so that if he loses the last throw he is sure
to be undone. ADDISON.
AUTHORS.
53
Towards those who communicaf" their
thoughts in print I cannot but look with a
friendly regard, provided there is no tendency
in their writings to vice. ADDISON.
To consider an author as the subject of ob-
loquy and detraction, we may observe with what
pleasure a work is received by the invidious part
of mankind in which a writer falls short of
himself. ADDISON.
Authors who have thus drawn off the spirits
of their thoughts should lie still for some time,
till their minds have gathered fresh strength, and,
by reading, reflecting, and conversation, laid in
a new stock of elegancies, sentiments, and im-
ages of nature. ADDISON.
It would be well for all authors if they knew
when to give over, and to desist from any further
pursuits after fame. ADDISON.
I consider time as an immense ocean, into
which many noble authors are entirely swallowed
up, many very much shattered, and damaged,
some quite disjointed and broken into pieces.
ADDISON.
Aristotle's rules for epic poetry which he had
drawn from his reflections upon Homer cannot
be supposed to quadrate exactly with the heroic
poems which have been made since his time; as
it is plain his rules would have been still more
perfect could he have perused the ^neid.
ADDISON.
I mention Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero,
the greatest philosopher, the most impartial his-
torian, and the most consummate statesman, of
all antiquity. ADDISON.
Who does not more admire Cicero as an
author than as a consul of Rome, and does not
oftener talk of the celebrated writers of our own
country in former ages, than of any among their
contemporaries ? ADDISON.
The books of Varro concerning navigation
have been lost, which would have given us
great light in these matters.
ARBUTHNOT.
That immortal work of Niebuhr which has
left other writers nothing else to do except
either to copy or abridge it. T. ARNOLD.
For all this good propriety of words and
pureness of phrases in Terence, you must not
follow him always in placing of them.
ASCHAM.
They who, by speech or writing, present to
the ear or eye of modesty any of the indecencies
2 allude to, are pests of society.
BEATTIE.
Aristotle's moral, rhetorical, and political
writings, in which his excellent judgment is
very little warped by logical subtleties, are far
the most useful part of his philosophy.
BEATTIE.
I would recommend Sallust, rather than
Tully's epistles; which I think are not so ex-
tremely valuable. Besides, Sallust is indis-
putably one of the best historians among the
Romans, both for the purity of his language
and elegance of his style. Me has, I think, a
fine, easy, and diversified narrative, mixed with
reflections, moral and political, neither very trite
and obvious, nor out of the way and abstract ;
which is, I think, the true beauty of historical
observation. Neither should I pass by his
beautiful painting of characters. In short, he
is an author that, on all accounts, I would re-
commend to you. As for Terence and Plautus,
what I fancy you will chiefly get by them, as to
the language, is some insight into the common
manner of speech used by the Romans. One
excels in the justness of his pieces, the other in
the humour. I think a play in each will be
sufficient. I would recommend to you Tully's
orations, excellent indeed.
BURKE, atat. 18, to R. Shackleton.
On the whole, though this father of the Eng-
lish learning [Beda] seems to have been but a
genius of the middle class, neither elevated nor
subtile, and one who wrote in a low style, sim-
ple, but not elegant, yet, when we reflect upon
the time in which he lived, the place in which
he spent his whole life, within the walls of a
monastery, in so remote and wild a country, it
is impossible to refuse him the praise of an in-
credible industry and a generous thirst of
knowledge. BURKE:
Abridgment of English History.
Ovid, not content with catching the leading
features of any scene or character, indulged
himself in a thousand minutice of description, a
thousand puerile prettinesses, which were in>
themselves uninteresting, and took off greatly
from the effect of the whole; as the numberless
suckers and straggling branches of a fruit tree,
if permitted to shoot out unrestrained, while
they are themselves barren and useless, dimin-
ish considerably the vigour of the parent stock.
Ovid had more genius, but less judgment, than
Virgil; Dryden more imagination, but less cor-
rectness, than Pope : had they not been deficient
in these points, the former would certainly have
equalled, the latter infinitely outshone, the
merits of his countryman.
RT. HON. GEORGE CANNING :
Microcosm, No. n.
The same populace sits for hours listening to
rhapsodists who recite Ariosto. CARLYLE.
It is absolutely necessary to recollect that the
age in which Shakspeare lived was one of great
abilities applied to individual and prudential
purposes, and not an age of high moral feeling
and lofty principle, which gives a man of genius
the power of thinking of all things in reference
to all. If, then, we should find that Shakspeare
took these materials as they were presented to
him, and yet to all effectual purposes produced
the same grand result as others attempted to
54
AUTHORS.
produce in an age so much more favourable,
shall we not feel and acknowledge the purity
and holiness of genius a light which, however
it might shine on a dunghill, was as pure as the
divine influence which created all the beauty
of nature? COLERIDGE.
The society of dead authors has this advan-
t?ge over that of the living: they never flatter
us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs,
nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their
shelves until we take them down. Besides, it
is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so
easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb. Living
tuthors, therefore, are usually bad companions:
if they have not gained a character, they seek
to do so by methods often ridiculous, always
disgusting; and if they have established a
character, they are silent, for fear of losing by
their tongue what they have acquired by their
pen : for many authors converse much more
foolishly than Goldsmith who have never writ-
ten half so well. COLTON : Lacon.
Subtract from many modern poets all that
may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will
remain. COLTON : Lacon.
Shakespeare, Butler, and Bacon have ren-
dered it extremely difficult for all who come
after them to be sublime, witty, or profound.
COLTON : Lacon.
It is a doubt whether mankind are most in-
debted to those who, like Bacon and Butler, dig
the gold from the mine of literature, or to those
who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real
value, and give it currency and utility. For all
the practical purposes of life, truth might as well
be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman ;
and -those who release her from her cobwebbed
shelf, and teach her to live with men, have the
merit .of liberating, if not of discovering her.
COLTON : Lacon.
Arioato observed not moderation in the vast-
ness, of 'his draught. DRYDEN.
'Episodical ornaments, such as descriptions
and narratives, were delivered to us from the
observations of Aristotle. DRYDEN.
.He furnished me with all the passages in
Aristotle and , Horace used to explain the art of
poetry by painting ; which, if ever I retouch
this essay, shall be inserted. DRYDEN.
For the Italians, Dante had begun to file their
language in yerse before Boccace, who likewise
received .no', little help from his master Petrarch ;
but the reformation of their prose was wholly
owing to Boc-eace. DRYDEN.
Boccace lived in the same age with Chaucer,
had the same genius, and followed the same
studies: both writ .novels, and each of them
cultivated his mother tongue. DRYDEN.
When I took up: Boccace unawares, I fell on
the same argument of preferring virtue to no-
bility of. blood &nd .titles,.. in. the story of Sigis-
munda. DRYDEN.
Boileau's numbers are excellent, his e cpres-
sions noble, his thoughts just, his language pure,
and his sense close. DRYI/EN.
Chaucer in many things resembled Ovid, and
that with no disadvantage on the side of the
modern author. DRYDEN.
Shakspeare rather writ happily than know-
ingly and justly; and Jonson, who by studying
Horace had been acquainted with the rules, yet
seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge, and
to make a monopoly of his learning.
DRYDEN.
Shakspeare was naturally learned : he needed
not the spectacles of books to read nature; he
looked inwards and found her there. .
DRYDEN.
Spenser endeavoured it [imitation] in the
Shepherd's Kalendar; but neither will it suc-
ceed in English. DRYDEN.
Spenser has followed both Virgil and The-
ocritus in the charms which he employs for
curing Britomartis of her love; but he had also
our poet's Ceiris in his eye. DRYDEN.
I shall take care that they have the advantage
of doing, in the regular progression of youthful
study, what I have done even in the short inter-
vals of laborious life ; that they shall transcribe
with their own hands, from all the works of
this most extraordinary person [Burke], the
soundest truths of religion. the justest prin-
ciples of morals, inculcated and rendered de-
lightful by the most sublime eloquence the
highest reach of philosophy brought down to
the level of common minds the most enlight-
ened observations on history, and the most
copious collection of useful maxims from the
experience of life.
LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE :
Speech in Defence of John Home Tooke, 1794.
Dennis . . . declares with great patriotic
vehemence, that he who allows Shakspeare
learning, and a learning with the ancients, ought
to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory
of Great Britain. R. FARMER.
Of all rewards, I grant, the most pleasing tD
a man of real merit is fame; but a polite age of
all times is that in which scarcely any share of
merit can acquire it. What numbers of fine
writers in the latter empire of Rome, when re-
finement was carried to the highest pitch, have
missed that fame and immortality which they
had fondly arrogated to themselves! How
many Greek authors, who wrote at the period
when Constantinople was the refined mistress
of the empire, now rest, either not printed, 01
not "read, in the libraries of Europe ! Those
who came first, while either state as yet was
barbarous, carried all the reputation away. Au
thors, as the age refined, became more numer.
ous, and their numbers destroyed their fame,
It is but natural, therefore, for the writer, when
conscious that his works will not procure him
AUTHORS.
fame hereafter, to endf.-avour to make them
turn out to his temporal interest here.
Whatever be the motives which induce men
to write, whether avarice or fame, the country
becomes most wise and happy in which they
most serve for instructors.
GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter LXXV.
Homer is the first poet and beggar of note
among the ancients ; he was blind, and sung his
ballads about the streets; but it is observed that
his mouth was more frequently filled with verses
than with bread. Plautus, the comic poet, was
better off; he had two trades, he was a poet
for his diversion, and helped to turn a mill in
order to gain a livelihood. Terence was a slave,
and Boethius died in gaol.
Among the Italians, Paulo Burghese, almost
as good a poet as Tasso, knew fourteen different
trades, and yet died because he could get em-
ployment in none. Tasso himself, *who had the
most amiable character of all poets, has often
been obliged to borrow a crown from some
friend, in order to pay for a month's subsistence :
he has left us a pretty sonnet, addressed to his
cat, in which he begs the light of her eyes to
write by, being too poor to afford himself a can-
dle. But Bentivoglio, poor Bentivoglio ! chiefly
demands our pity. His comedies will last with
the Italian language : he dissipated a noble for-
tune in acts of charity and benevolence; but,
falling into misery in his old age, was refused
to be admitted into an hospital which he him-
self had erected.
In Spain, it is said, the great Cervantes died
of hunger; and it is certain that the famous
Camoens ended his days in a hospital.
If we turn to France, we shall there find even
stronger instances of the ingratitude of the pub-
lic. Vaugelas, one of the politest writers and
one of the honestest men of his time, was sur-
named The Owl, from his being obliged to keep
within all day, and venture out only by night,
through fear of his creditors. . . .
But the sufferings of the poet in other coun-
tries is nothing when compared to his distresses
here ; the names of Spenser and Otway, Butler
.and Dryden, are every day mentioned as a na-
tional reproach : some of them lived in a state
of precarious indigence, and others literally died
of hunger. GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of (he World, Letter LXXXIV.
Who can withstand the fascination and magic
cf his eloquence? The excursions of his genius
are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all
nature under tribute, and has collected riches
from every scene of the creation and every walk
of art. His eulogium on the Queen of France
is a masterpiece of pathetic composition : so
select are its images, so fraught with tender-
ness, and so rich with colours " dipped in
heaven," that he who can read it without rap-
ture may have merit as a reasoner, but must
resign all pretensions to taste and sensibility.
His imagination is, in truth, only too prolific: a
world of itself, where he dwells in the midst
of chimerical alarms, is the dupe of h : s own
enchantments, and starts, like Prospero, at the
spectres of his own creation.
ROBERT HALL :
Apology for the Freedom of the Pres^
Sect. IV. (On Edmund Burke.}
When, at the distance of more than half a
century, Christianity was assaulted by a Wool-
S/OH, a Tindal, and a Morgan, it was ably s\i]>-
ported both by clergymen of the established
church and writings among Protestant dissenters.
The labours of a Clarke and a Butler were as-
sociated with those of a Doddridge, a Leland,
and a Lardner, with such equal reputation and
success as to make it evident that the intrinsic
excellence of a religion needs not the aid <jf
external appendages; but that, with or without
a dowry, her charms are of sufficient power to
fix and engage the heart.
ROBERT HALL:
Modern Infidelity, Preface.
He that endeavours after fame by writing
solicits the regard of a multitude fluctuating in
pleasures, or immersed in business, without time
for intellectual amusements : he appeals to
judges prepossessed by passions, or corrupted
by prejudices, which preclude their approbation
of any new performance. Some are too indo-
lent to read anything till its reputation is estab-
lished ; others too envious to promote that fame
which gives them pain by its increase. What is
new is opposed, because most are unwilling to
be taught ; and what is known is rejected, be-
cause it is not sufficiently considered that men
more frequently require to be reminded than
informed. The learned are afraid to declare
their opinion early, lest they should put their
reputation in hazard ; the ignorant always im-
agine themselves giving some proof of delicacy,
when they refuse to be pleased; and he that
finds his way to reputation through all these
obstructions must acknowledge that he is in-
debted to other causes besides his industry, his
learning, or his wit.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 2.
If we look back into past times, we find in-
numerable names of authors once in high repu-
tation, read perhaps by the beautiful, quoted by
the witty, and commented on by the grave, but
of whom we now know only that they existed.
If we consider the distribution of literary fame
in our own time, we shall find it a possession of
very uncertain tenure ; sometimes bestowed by
a sudden caprice of the public, and again trans-
ferred to a new favourite, for no other reason
than that he is new ; sometimes refused to long
labour an.d eminent desert, and sometimes
granted to very slight pretensions; lost some--
times by security and negligence, and !-oine-
times by too diligent endeavours to retain it.
A successful author is equally in danger of
the diminution of his fame, whether he con-
tinues or ceases to write. The regard of the
public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the
AUTHORS.
remembrance of past service will quickly lan-
guish unless successive performances frequently
revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is
new hazard, and there are few who do not, at
some unlucky time, injure their own characters
by attempting to enlarge them.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 21.
It has been remarked, that authors are genus
irritabile, a generation very easily put out of
temper, and that they seldom fail of giving
proofs of their irascibility upon the slightest at-
tack of criticism, or the most gentle or modest
offer of advice and information.
Writers, being best acquainted with one an-
other, have represented this character as prevail-
ing among men of literature, which a more
extensive view of the world would have shown
them to be diffused through all human nature, to
mingle itself with every species of ambition and
desire of praise, and to discover its effects with
greater or less restraint, and under disguises
more or less artful, in all places and all con-
ditions.
The quarrels of writers, indeed, are more
observed, because they necessarily appeal to the
decision of the public. Their enmities are
incited by applauses from their parties, and
prolonged by treacherous encouragement for
general diversion, and when the contest happens
to rise higher between men of genius and learn-
ing, its memory is continued for the same reason
as its vehemence was at first promoted, because
it gratifies the malevolence or curiosity of read-
ers, and relieves the vacancies of life witty
amusement and laughter. The personal dis-
putes, therefore, of rivals in wit, are sometimes
transmitted to posterity, when the grudges and
the heart-burnings of men less conspicuous,
though carried an with equal bitterness, and
productive of greater evils, are exposed to the
knowledge of those only whom they nearly
affect, and suffered to pass off and be forgotten
among common and casual transactions.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 40.
The chief glory of every people arises from
its authors. DR. S. JOHNSON :
Preface to his Dictionary.
Every other author may aspire to praise : the
lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach ;
and even this negative recompense has been
granted to very few. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Was there ever anything written by mere man
that was wished longer by its readers, excepting
Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pil-
grim's Progress ? OR. S. JOHNSON.
Out of the reach of danger, he [Junius] has
been bold ; out of the reach of shame, he has
been confident. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Few books have been perused by me with
greater pleasure than his [Watts's] " Improve-
ment of the Mind." DR. S. JOHNSON.
I am the sole depositary of my own secret,
and it shall perish w ; th me. JUNIUS.
Simonides was an excellent poet, insomuch
that he made his fortune by it.
L' ESTRANGE.
No writings- we need to be solicitous about
the meaning of but those that contain truths we
are to believe or laws we are to obey : we may
be less anxious about the sense of other authors.
LOCKE.
We are beholden to judicious writers of all
ages for those discoveries and discourses they
have left behind them for our instruction.
LOCKE.
Aristotle's large views, acuteness and pene-
tration of thought, and strength of judgment,
few have equalled. LOCKE.
There have been times when men of letters
looked, not to the public, but to the govern-
ment, or to a few great men, for the reward of
their exertions. It was thus in the time of Mae-
cenas and Pollio at Rome, of the Medici at
Florence, of Louis the Fourteenth in France,
of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford in this coun-
try. Now, Sir, I well know that there are cases
in which it is fit and graceful, nay, in which it
is a sacred duty, to reward the merits or to re-
lieve the distresses of men of genius by the
exercise of this species of liberality. But these
cases are exceptions. I can conceive no system
more fatal to the integrity and independence of
literary men than one under which they should
be taught to look for their daily bread to the
favour of ministers and nobles. I can conceive
no system more certain to turn those minds
which are formed by nature to be the blessings
and ornaments of our species into public scan-
dals and pests. LORD MACAULAY :
Speech on Copyright, Feb. 5, 1841.
In an age in which there are so few readers
that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising
from the sale of his works, no man who has not
an independent fortune can devote himself to
literary pursuits unless he is assisted by patron-
age. In such an age, accordingly, men of let-
ters too often pass their lives in dangling at the
heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the
faults which dependence tends to produce, pass
into their character. They become the parasites
and slaves of the great. It is melancholy to
think how many of the highest and most exqui-
sitely formed of human intellects have been con-
demned to the ignominious labour of disposing
the commonplaces of adulation in new forms
and brightening them into new splendour.
Horace invoking Augustus in the most enthu-
siastic language of religious veneration, Statius
flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant,
for a* morsel of bread, Ariosto versifying the
whole genealogy of a niggardly patron, Tasso
extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched
creature who locked him up in a mad-house,
these are but a few of the instances which might
easily be given of the degradation to which
those must submit who, not possessing a com-
AUTHORS.
57
petent fortune, are resolved to write when there
are scarcely any who read.
This evil the progress of the human mind
tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes
more and more common, the patronage of indi-
viduals becomes less and less necessary. In
the middle of the last century a marked change
took place. The tone of literary men, both in
this country and in France, became higher and
more independent. Pope boasted that he was
the " one poet" who had " pleased by manly
ways ;" he derided the soft dedications with
which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own
superiority over the pensioned Boileau, and
gloried in being not the follower, but the friend,
of nobles and princes. The explanation of all
this is very simple. Pope was the first English-
man who by the mere sale of his writings
realized a sum which enabled him to live in
comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson
extols him for the magnanimity which he showed
in inscribing his Iliad not to a minister or a
peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would
scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is
astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment
of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter
Scott to Mr. Moore. The idea of either of
those gentlemen looking out for some lord who
would be likely to give him a few guineas in
return for a fulsome dedication seems laughably
incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden
or Otway would have done; and it would be
hard to blame him for it. Otway is said to have
been choked with a piece of bread which he
devoured 1 in the rage of hunger ; and, whether
this story be true or false, he was beyond all
question miserably poor. Dryden, at near
seventy, when at the head of the literary men
of England, without equal or second, received
three hundred pounds for his Fables, a collection
often thousand verses, and of such verses as no
man then living, except himself, could have
produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between
six and seven thousand pounds, the fruits of his
poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had
a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience
than his predecessors, but because he had a larger
income, that he kept up the dignity of the liter-
ary character so much better than they had done.
From the time of Pope to the present day the
readers have been constantly becoming more
and more numerous, and the writers, conse-
quently, more and more independent. It is
assuredly a great evil that men fitted by their
talents and acquirements to enlighten and charm
the world should be reduced to the necessity
of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return
for the sustenance of life. But, though we
heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we
cannot but see with concern that another evil
has succeeded to it. The public is now the
patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the
rich and powerful bestowed on authors from
the time of Maecenas to that of Harley would
not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that
which has been paid by English booksellers to
lifty-three authors during the last fifty years.
Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court
individuals, and have begun to court the public.
They formerly used flattery. They now use
puffing. LORD MACAULAY:
Mr. Robert Montgomery's Poems, April, 1830.
Just such is the feeling which a man of liberal
education naturally entertains towards the great
minds of former ages. The debt which he owes
to them is incalculable. They have guided him
to truth. They have filled his mind with noble
and graceful images. They have stood by him
in all vicissitudes, comforters in sorrow, nurses
in sickness, companions in solitude. These
friendships are exposed to no danger from the
occurrences by which other attachments are
weakened or dissolved. Time glides on ; for-
tune is inconstant ; tempers are soured ; bonds
which seemed indissoluble are daily sundered
by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But
no such cause can affect the silent converse
which we hold with the highest of human intel-
lects. That placid intercourse is disturbed by
no jealousies or resentments. These are the old
friends who are never seen with new faces, who
are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory
and in obscurity. With the dead there is no
rivalry. In the dead there is no change. Plato
is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant
Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante
never stays too long. No difference of political
opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can
excite the horror of Bossuet.
LORD MACAULAY:
Lord Bacon, July, 1837.
A most idle and contemptible controversy had
arisen in France touching the comparative merit
of the ancient and modern writers. It was cer-
tainly not to be expected that in that age the
question would be tried according to those large
and philosophical principles of criticism which
guided the judgments of Lessing and of Herder.
But it might have been expected that those who
undertook to decide the point would at least
take the trouble to read and understand the
authors on whose merits they were to pronounce.
Now, it is no exaggeration to say that among
the disputants who clamoured, some for the
ancients and some for the moderns, very few
were decently acquainted with either ancient or
modern literature, and hardly one was well
acquainted with both. In Racine's amusing
preface to the Iphigenie the reader may find
noticed a most ridiculous mistake into which
one of the champions of the moderns fell about
a passage in the Alcestis of Euripides. An-
other writer is so inconceivably ignorant as to
blame Homer for mixing the four Greek dia-
lects, Doric, Ionic, yEolic, and Attic, just, says
he, as if a French poet were to put Gascon
phrases and Picard phrases into the midst of
his pure Parisian writing. On the other hand,
it is no exaggeration to say that the defenders
of the ancients were entirely unacquainted with
the greatest productions of later times; nor,
indeed, were the defenders of the moderns
better informed. The parallels which were
AUTHORS.
instituted in the course of this dispute are inex-
pressibly ludicrous. Balznc was selected as the
rival of Cicero. Corneille was said to unite
the merits of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripi-
des. We should like to see a Prometheus after
Corneille's fashion. The Provincial Letters,
masterpieces undoubtedly of reasoning, wit, and
eloquence, were pronounced to be superior to
all the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Lucian
together, particularly in the art of dialogue ; an
art in which, as it happens, Plato far excelled
all men, and in which Pascal, great and admi-
rable in other respects, is notoriously very
deficient. LORD MACAULAY :
Sir William Temple, Oct. 1838.
This childish controversy [touching the com-
parative merit of the ancient and modern wri-
ters] spread to England; and some mischievous
daemon suggested to Temple the thought of
undertaking the defence of the ancients. As to
his qualifications for the task, it is sufficient to
say that he knew not a word of Greek. But
his vanity, which, when he was engaged in the
conflicts of active life and surrounded by rivals,
had been kept in tolerable order by his dis-
cretion, now, when he had long lived in seclu-
sion, and had become accustomed to regard
himself as by far the first man of his circle,
rendered him blind to his own deficiencies. In
an evil hour he published an Essay on Ancient
and Modern Learning. The style of this treat-
ise is veiy good, the matter ludicrous and con-
temptible to the last degree. There we read
how Lycurgus travelled into India, and brought
the Spartan laws from that country ; how Or-
pheus made voyages in search of Knowledge,
and attained to a depth of learning which has
made him renowned in all succeeding ages; how
Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in Egypt,
and, after graduating there, spent twelve years
more at Babylon, where the Magi admitted him
ad eundem ; how the ancient brahmins lived two
hundred years; how the earliest Greek philoso-
phers foretold earthquakes and plagues, and put
down riots by magic; and how much Ninus
surpassed in abilities any of his successors on
the throne of Assyria. The moderns, Sir Wil-
liam owns, have found out the circulation of the
blood ; but, on the other hand, they have quite
lost the art of conjuring; nor can any modern
fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his
performance. He tells us that " Thales, Pythag-
oras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle,
and Epicurus made greater progresses in the
several empires of science than any of their
successors have since been able to reach ;" which
is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest
names in British science are Merlin, Michael
Scot, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon. Indeed,
the manner in which Temple mixes the historical
and the fabulous reminds us of those classical
dictionaries, intended for the use of schools, in
which Narcissus the lover of himself and Nar-
cissus the freedman of Claudius, Pollux the son
of Jupiter and Pollux the author of the Ono-
masticon, are ranged under the same headings
and treated as personages equally real. The
effect of this arrangement resembles that which
would be produced by a dictionary of modern
names consisting of such articles as the follow-
m S ' " Jones, William, an eminent Orientalist,
and one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of
Judicature in Bengal Davy, a fiend, who de-
stroys ships Thomas, a foundling, brought up
by Mr. Allworthy." It is from such sources as
these that Temple seems to have learned all that
he knew about the ancients. He puts the story
of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the
battle of Arbela : as if we had exactly the same
reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts
with his lyre which we have for believing that
there were races at Pisa, or that Alexander
conquered Darius.
He manages little better when he comes to
the moderns. He gives us a catalogue of those
whom he regards as the greatest writers of later
times. It is sufficient to say that in his list of
Italians he has omitted Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto,
and Tasso ; in his list of Spaniards, Lope and
Calderon; in his list of French, Pascal, Bossuet,
Moliere, Corneille, Racine,' and Boileau; and in
his list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shak-
speare, and Milton.
LORD MACAULAY: Sir William Temple.
Bute, who had always been considered as a
man of taste and reading, affected from the mo-
ment of his elevation the character of a Mae-
cenas. If he expected to conciliate the public
by encouraging literature and art, he was griev-
ously mistaken. Indeed, none of the objects
of his munificence, with the single exception of
Johnson, can be said to have been well selected;
and the public, not unnaturally, ascribed the
selection of Johnson rather to the Doctor's
political prejudices than to his literary merits :
for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who
had nothing in common with Johnson except
violent Jacobitism, and who had stood in the
pillory for a libel on the. Revolution, was hon-
oured with a mark of royal approbation similar
to that which was bestowed on the author of the
English Dictionary and of the Vanity of Human
Wishes. It was remarked that Adam, a Scotch-
man, was the court architect ; and that Ramsay,
a Scotchman, was the court painter, and was
preferred to Reynolds. Mallet, a Scotchman,
of no high literary fame, and of infamous char-
acter, partook largely of the liberality of the
government. John Home, a Scotchman, was
rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with
a pension and with a sinecure place. But when
the author of The Bard and of the Elegy in a
Country Churchyard ventured to ask for a Pro-
fessorship, the emoluments of which he much
needed, and for the duties of which he was, in
many respects, better qualified than any man
living, he was refused; and the post was be-
stowed on the pedagogue under whose care the
favourite's son-in-law, Sir James Lowther, had
made such signal proficiency in the graces and
in the humane viitues. LORD MACAULAY:
The Earl of Chatham , Oct. 1844.
A UTHORS.A UTHORSHIP.
59
Epicurus, we are told, left behind him three
h indred volumes of his own works, wherein he
had not inserted a single quotation ; and we
have it upon the authority of Varro's own words
that he himself composed four hundred and
ninety books. Seneca assures us that Didymus
the grammarian wrote no less than four thou-
sand ; but Origen, it seems, was yet more pro-
lific, and extended his performances even to six
thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine
with what sort of materials the productions of
such expeditious workmen were wrought up :
sound thoughts and well-matured reflections
could have no share, we may be sure, in these
hasty performances. Thus are books multiplied,
whilst authors are scarce ; and so much easier
is it to write than to think ! But shall I not
myself, Palamedes, prove an instance that it is
so, if 1 suspend any longer your own more im-
portant reflections by interrupting you with such
asinine? MELMOTH :
Letters by Sir T. Fitzosborne.
In this last part of his imaginary travels,
Swift has indulged a misanthropy that is intol-
erable. LORD ORRERY.
The crowded, yet clear and luminous, gal-
axies of imagery diffused through the works of
Bishop Taylor. DR. S. PARR.
Scaliger willeth us to admire Plautus as a
comedian, but Terence as a pure and elegant
speaker. PEACHAM : Of Poetry.
The worst authors might endeavour to please
us; and in that endeavour deserve something at
our hands. POPE.
It is a very unlucky circumstance to be obliged
to retaliate the injuries of such authors, whose
works are so soon forgotten that we are in danger
already of appearing the first transgressors.
POPE and SWIFT.
An author is in the condition of a culprit ;
the public are his judges: by allowing too
much, and condescending too far, he may injure
his own cause ; and by pleading and asserting
too boldly he may displease the court.
PRIOR.
We know the highest pleasure our minds are
capable of enjoying with composure, when we
read sublime thoughts communicated to us by
men of great genius and eloquence. Such is
the entertainment we meet with in the philo-
sophic parts of Cicero's writings. Truth and
good sense have there so charming a dress, that
they could hardly be more agreeably represented
with the addition of poetical fiction and the
power of numbers.
SIR R. STEEI.E: Spectator, No. 146.
These look up to you with reverence, and
would be animated by the sight of him at whose
soul they have taken fire in his writings.
SWIFT: To Pope.
They do but trace over the paths that have
been beaten by the ancients ; or comment, critic,
and flourish upon them. SIR W. TEMPLE.
I am sure there are few who would not shrink
from iiffirmmg, at least if they at all realized
the words they were using, that they compre-
hended Shakspeare, however much they appre-
hend in him. R. C. TRENCH.
There is in Shaftesbury's works a lively pert-
ness and a parade of literature ; but it is hard
that we should be bound to admire the reveries.
DR. I. WATTS.
The laboured works of Master Johnson ; the
no less worthy composures of the both worthily
excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher.
JOHN WEBSTER, 1612.
He [Bacon] is throughout, and especially in
his Essays, one of the most suggestive authors
that ever wrote.
WHATELY,
Tacitus, who is one of the most antithetical,
is ... one of the least periodic, of all the Latin
writers. WHATELY.
Those works of fiction are worse than unpro-
fitable that inculcate morality, with an exclusion
of all reference to religious principle. This is
obviously and notoriously the character of Miss
Edgeworth's Moral Tales. And so entire and
resolute is this exclusion, that it is maintained
at the expense of what may be called poetical
truth : it destroys, in many instances, the prob-
ability of the tale, and the naturalness of the
characters. That Christianity does exist, every
one must believe as an incontrovertible truth ;
nor can any one deny that, whether true or false,
it does exercise at least is supposed to exercise
an influence on the feelings and conduct of
some of the believers in it. To represent, there-
fore, persoas of various ages, sex, country, and
station in life, as practising, on the most trying
occasions, every kind of duty, and encountering
every kind of danger, difficulty, and hardship,
while none of them ever makes the least refer-
ence to a religious motive, is as decidedly at
variance with reality what is called in works
of fiction unnatural as it would be to repre-
sent Mahomet's enthusiastic followers as rush-
ing into battle without any thought of his
promised paradise. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Studies.
AUTHORSHIP.
If writings are thus durable, and may pass
from age to age through the whole course of
time, how careful should an author be of com-
mitting anything to print that may corrupt pos-
terity and poison the minds of men with vice
and error! Writers of great talents who em-
ploy their \. irts in propagating immorality, and
seasoning vicious sentiments with wit and
humour, are to be looked upon as the pests of
society, and the enemies of mankind. They
leave books behind them (as it is said of those
who die in distempers which breed an ill-will
towards their own species) to scatter infection
and destroy their posterity. They act the coun-
6o
AUTHORSHIP.
terparts of a Confucius or a Socrates; and
seem to have been sent into the world to de-
prave human nature and sink it into the con-
dition of brutality.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 166.
And here give me leave to mention what
Monsieur Boileau has so very well enlarged
upon in the preface to his works, that wit and
fine writing do not consist so much in advanc-
ing things that are new, as in giving things that
are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible
for us, who live in the latter ages of the world,
to make observations in criticism, morality, or
in any art or science, which have not been
touched upon by others. We have little else
left us but to represent the common sense of
mankind in fiore strong, more beautiful, or
more uncommon lights. If a reader examines
Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but very
few precepts in it which he may not meet with
in Aristotle, and which were not commonly
known by all the poets of the Augustan age.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 253.
Method is of advantage to a work both in
respect to the writer and the reader. In regard
to the first, it is a great help to his invention.
When a man has planned his discourse, he finds
a great many thoughts rising out of every head,
that do not offer themselves upon the general
survey of a subject. His thoughts are at the
same time more intelligible, and better discover
their drift and meaning, when they are placed
in their proper lights, and follow one another
in a regular series, than when they are thrown
together without order and connection. There
is always an obscurity in confusion ; and the
same sentence that would have enlightened the
reader in one part of a discourse perplexes him
in another. For the same reason, likewise,
every thought in a methodical discourse shows
itself in its greatest beauty, as the several figures
in a piece of painting receive new grace from
their disposition in the picture. The advantages
of a reader from a methodical discourse are
correspondent with those of the writer. He
comprehends everything easily, takes it in with
pleasure, and retains it long.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 476.
Peaceable times are the best to live in, though
not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.
ADDISON.
rt would be well for all authors if they knew
when to give over, and to desist from any farther
pursuits after fame. ADDISON.
I have been distasted of this way of writing
by reason of long prefaces and exordiums.
ADDISON.
Successful authors do what they can to ex-
clude a competitor; while the unsuccessful,
with as much eagerness, lay their claim to him
us their brother. ADDISON.
The public is always even with an author
who has not a just deference for them : the con-
tempt is reciprocal. ADDISON.
The great art of a writer shows itself in the
choice of pleasing allusions. ADDISON.
There is not a more melancholy object in the
learned world than a man who has written him-
self down. ADDISON.
Twenty to one offend more In writing too
much than too little ; even as twenty to one fall
into sickness rather by over-much fulness than
by any lack. ASCHAM.
Prefaces, and excusations, and other speeches
of reference to the person, are great wastes of
time. LORD BACON.
On this point I have a piece of advice to offer
to all young intellectual aspirants : they should
keep their commodities to themselves; they
should not produce their notions until they have
wrought them into form. I did the contrary of
this myself, and I smarted severely for it. In
the first place, I used to confuse myself with
the perplexity of my thoughts, half concep-
tions, abortions of truth that came to the birth
when my mind had not strength to bring them
forth, monsters begotten out of the cloud, like
those in the old fable. With Cassio, I saw a
mass of things, but nothing distinctly. I had
chosen my own points of observation ; I viewed
many things differently from the vulgar, but my
visions for some time, until my eye was accus-
tomed to the change, were wont to float before
me vaguely and inapprehensibly. I had re-
jected the hack notions, the uses of other men,
and had as yet made none for myself that I
could call properly my own. What, then, would
have been my wisdom ? Clearly, to reserve
these rough sketches of my intellect for secret
service, and not to set them forth for show ; to
veil from the vulgar eye the unseemliness of my
mind, while in its rudiments; to employ its
" airy portraiture" for exercise, in order that it
might so learn to labour finally for use ; just as
the young painter will work ofif a hundred
sketches for the fire before he can finish one for
public exhibition. In the mean time I should
have holden to the old adage, " Loquendum ut
vulgus sentiendum ut docti." I should have
talked and demeaned myself like mere matter-
of-fact men, until I felt that I had risen to the
level of the men of mind and had attained the
mastery of their method. I should have let my
raw fruit hang and sun itself upon the tree till
it was penetrated with ripeness and would come
away easily upon the touch of a little finger. I
ought not to have torn it off violently and with
difficulty while its humours were yet crude, to
the laceration of the parent tree, the torture of
my own inward man. BENTLEY.
There are three difficulties in authorship: t3
write "anything worth the publishing to find
honest men to publish it and to get sensible
men to read it. Literature has now become a
game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings;
the Critics, the Knaves; the Public, the Pack;
and the poor Author, the mere Table, or Thin^
played upon. COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
AUTHORSHIP.
61
Every author is a far better judge of the pains
'chat his efforts have cost him than any reader
can possibly be ; but to what purpose he has
taken those pains, this is a question on which
his readers will not allow the author a voice,
nor even an opinion ; from the tribunal of the
public there is no appeal, and it is fit that it
should be so; otherwise we should not only
have rivers of ink expended in bad writing, but
oceans more in defending it : for he that writes
in a bad style is sure to retort in a worse.
COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
That author, however, who has thought more
than he has read, read more than he has written,
and written more than he has published, if he
does not command success, has at least deserved
it. In the article of rejection and abridgment
we must be severe to ourselves, if we wish for
mercy from others; since for one great genius
who has written a /////? book we have a thousand
little geniuses who have written great books. A
volume, therefore, that contains more words than
ideas, like a tree that has more foliage than fruit,
may suit those to resort to who want not to feast,
but to dream and to slumber; but the misfor-
tune is, that in this particular instance nothing
can equal the ingratitude of the public ; who
were never yet known to have the slightest com-
passion for those authors who have deprived
themselves of sleep in order to procure it for
their readers. COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
As the great fault of our orators is, that they
get up to make a speech, rather than to speak ;
so the great error of our authors is, that they sit
down to make a book, rather than to write. To
combine profundity with perspicuity, wit with
judgment, solidity with vivacity, truth with nov-
elty, and all of them with liberality, who is suf-
ficient for these things ? a very serious question ;
but it is one which authors had much better
propose to themselves before publication, than
have proposed to them by their editors after it.
COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
The great designs that have been digested and
matured, and the great literary works that have
been begun and finished, in prisons, fully prove
that tyrants have not yet discovered any chains
that can fetter the mind. COLTON : Lacon.
If I might give a short hint to an impartial
writer, it would be to tell him his fate. If he
resolves to venture upon the dangerous preci-
pice of telling unbiassed truth, let him proclaim
v/ar upon mankind, neither to give nor to take
quarter. If he tells the crimes of great men,
they fall upon him with the iron hands of the
law ; if he tells them of virtues, when they have
any, then the mob attacks him with slander.
But if he regards truth, let him expect martyr-
dom on both sides, and then he may go on fear-
less : and this is the course I take myself.
DE FOE.
I dare venture nothing without a strict exam-
ination ; and am as much ashamed to put a loose
indigested play upon the public as to offer brass
money in a payment. DRYDEN.
He who proposes to be an author, should first
be a student. DRYDKN.
Too much labour often takes away the spirit
by adding to the polishing; so that there re-
mains nothing but a dull correctness; a piece
without any considerable faults, but with few
beauties. DRYDEN.
Whatsoever makes nothing to your subject
and is improper to it, admit not into your work.
DRYDKN.
The quickness of the imagination is seen in
the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the
accuracy in the expression. DRYDEN.
He knew when to leave off, a continence
which is practised by few writers.
DRYDEN.
What can be urged for them who, not having
the vocation of poverty to scribble, out of mere
wantonness make themselves ridiculous?
DRYDEN.
Comedy is both excellently instructive and
extremely pleasant ; satire lashes vice into re-
formation ; and humour represents folly so as
to render it ridiculous. DRYDEN.
The French writers do not burden themselves
too much with plot, which has been reproached
to them as a fault. DRYDEN.
There is another extreme in obscure writers
which some empty conceited heads are apt to
run into, out of a prodigality of words and a
want of sense. FELTON : On the Classics.
Raw and injudicious writers propose one thing
for their subject, and run off to another.
FELTON.
Of all the kinds of writing and discourse,
that appears to me incomparably the best which
is distinguished by grand masses and prominent
bulks; which stand out in magnitude from the
tame ground-work, and impel the mind by a
succession of separate strong impulses, rather
than a continuity of equable sentiment.
JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I
first conceived the idea of a work which has
amused and exercised near twenty years of my
life. GIBBON.
Brave wits that have made essays worthy of
immortality, yet by reason of envious and more
popular opposers have submitted to fate, and are
almost lost in oblivion. _ GLANVILL.
Aristotle was wont to divide his lectures and
readings into acroamatical and exoterical.
JOHN HALES.
The distance is commonly very great between
actual performances and speculative possibility.
It is natural to suppose that as much as has been
done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on
the morrow some difficulty emerges, or some
external impediment obstructs. Indolence, in-
terruption, business, and pleasure, all take theii
AUTHORSHIP.
turns of retardation ; and every long work is
lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and
ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Per-
haps no extensive and multifarious perform-
ance was ever effected within the term origi-
nally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that
runs against time has an antagonist not subject
to casualties. DR. S. JOHNSON :
Life of Pope.
This dependence of the soul upon the seasons,
those temporary and periodical ebbs and flows
of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided
as the fumes of vain imagination. Sapiens
dominatibus astris. The author that thinks
himself weather-bound will find, with a little
help from hellebore, that he is only idle or
exhausted. But while this notion has possession
of the head, it produces the inability which it
supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy
to our hopes : possunt quia posse mdentur.
When success seems attainable, diligence is
enforced ; but when it is admitted that the
faculties are suppressed by a cross wind or a
cloudy sky, the day is given up without resist-
ance : for who can contend with the course of
nature ? DR. S. JOHNSON :
Life of Milton..
In an occasional performance no height of
excellence can be expected from any mind,
however fertile in itself, and however stored
with acquisitions. He whose work is general
and arbitrary has the choice of his matter, and
takes that which his inclination and his studies
have best qualified him to display and decorate.
He is at liberty to delay his publication till he
has satisfied his friends and himself, till he has
reformed his first thoughts by subsequent exam-
ination, and polished away those faults which
the precipitation of ardent composition is likely
to leave behind it. Virgil is related to have
poured out a great number of lines in the morn-
ing, and to have passed the day in reducing them
to fewer. The occasional poet is circumscribed
by the narrowness of his subject. Whatever can
happen to man has happened so often that little
remains for fancy or invention. We have been
all born ; we have most of us been married ;
and so many have died before us, that our deaths
can supply but few materials for a poet. In the
fate of princes the public has an interest; and
what happens to them of good or evil the poets
have always considered as business for the Muse.
But after so many inauguratory gratulations, nup-
tial hymns, and funeral dirges, he must be highly
favoured by nature, or by fortune, who says any-
thing not said before. Even war and conquest,
however splendid, suggest no new images: the
triumphal chariot of a victorious monarch can
be decked only with those ornaments that have
graced his predecessors.
Not only matter but time is wanting. The
poem must not be delayed till the occasion is
forgotten. The lucky moments of animated
imagination cannot be attended ; elegances and
illustrations cannot be multiplied by gradual
accumulation: the composition must be des-
patched while conversation is yet busy, and
admiration fresh; and haste is to be made lest
some other event should lay hold upon man-
kind. Occasional compositions may, however,
secure to a writer the praise both of learning
and facility ; for they cannot be the effect of long
study, and must be furnished immediately from
the treasures of the mind.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Life of Dryden.
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle.
We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Spar-
row of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases
himself with a performance which owes nothing
to the subject. But compositions merely pretty
have the fate of other pretty things, and are
quitted in time for something useful : they are
flowers fragrant and fair, but of short duration;
or they are blossoms to be valued only as they
foretell fruits.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Life of Waller.
Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults;
negligence or errors are signal and local, but
tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are
censured and forgotten, but the power of tedious-
ness propagates itself. He that is weary the first
hour is more weary the second ; as bodies forced
into motion contrary to their tendency pass
more and more slowly through every successive
interval of space. Unhappily, this pernicious
failure is that which an author is least able to
discover. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves ;
and the act of composition fills and delights the
mind with change of language and succession
of images. Every couplet when produced is
new, and novelty is the great source of pleasure.
Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous
when he first wrote it, or contracted his work
till his ebullitions of invention had subsided.
And even if he should control his desire of im-
mediate renown, still keep his work nine years
unpublished, he will still be the author and still
in danger of deceiving himself; and if he con-
sults his friends he will probably find men who
have more kindness than judgment, or more fear
to offend than desire to instruct.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Prior.
The two most engaging powers of an author
are to make new things familiar and familiar
things new. DR. S. JOHNSON.
The remedy of fruitfulness is easy, but no
labour will help the contrary; I will like and
praise some things in a young writer, which yet,
if he continues in, I cannot but justly hate him
for. BEN JONSON.
Most writers use their words loosely and un-
certainly, and do not make plain and clear
deductions of words one from another, which
were not difficult to do, did they not find it con-
venient to shelter their ignorance, or obstinacy,
under the obscurity of their terms. LOCKE.
If authors cannot be prevailed with to keep
close to truth and instruction, by unvaried terms,
and plain, unsophisticated arguments, yet it con-
cerns leaders not to be imposed on. LOCKE.
A UTHORSHIP.A VARICE.
Hoping that his name may deserve to appear
not among the mercenary crew of false pretend-
ers to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort
of such as evidently were born to study, and
love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any
other end than the service of God and truth,
and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of
praise which God and good men have consented
shall be the reward of those whose published
labours advance the good of mankind.
MILTON : Areopagitica.
Never write on a subject without having first
read yourself full on it; and never read on a
subject till you have thought yourself hungry
on it. RlCHTER.
And now the most beautiful dawn that mortal
can behold arose upon his spirit, the dawn of
a new composition. For the book that a per-
son is beginning to create or design contains
within itself half a life, and God only knows
what an expanse of futurity also. Hopes of
improvement ideas which are to insure the
development and enlightenment, of the human
race swarm with a joyful vitality in his brain,
as he softly paces up and down in the twilight,
when it has become too dark to write.
RlCHTER.
Authorship is, according to the spirit in which
it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labour,
a handicraft, an art, a science, or a virtue.
A. W. SCHLEGEL.
I find by experience that writing is like build-
ing; wherein the undertaker, to supply some
defect or serve some convenience which at first
he saw not, is usually forced to exceed his first
model and proposal, and many times to double
the charge and expense of it.
DR. JOHN SCOTT.
Consult the acutest poets and speakers, and
they will confess that their quickest, most ad-
mired conceptions were such as darted into
their minds like sudden flashes of lightning,
they know not how nor whence.
SOUTH.
As for my labours, which he is pleased to in-
quire after, if they can but wear one imperti-
nence out of human life, destroy a single vice,
or give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest
mind, in short, if the world can be but one
virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious,
or receive from them the smallest addition to
their innocent diversions, I shall not think my
pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in
vain. SIR R. STEELE : Taller t No. 89.
Would a writer know how to behave himself
with relation to posterity, let him consider in
old books what he finds that he is glad to know,
and what omissions he most laments.
SWIFT.
By the time that an author hath written out
a book, he and his readers are become old
acquaintants. SWIFT.
AVARICE.
It is by bribing, not so often by being biibecl,
that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind.
Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many. It
finds a multitude of checks, and many opposcrs,
in every walk of life. But the objects of am-
bition are for the few ; and every person who
aims at indirect profit, and therefore wants
other protection than innocence and law, in-
stead of its rival, becomes its instrument. There
is a natural allegiance and fealty due to this
domineering, paramount evil, from all the vassal
vices, which acknowledge its superiority, and
readily militate under its banners; and it is
under that discipline alone that avarice is able
to spread to any considerable extent, or to ten-
der itself a general, public mischief.
BURKE:
Speech on the Nabob of Ascot s Debts,
Feb. 28, 1785.
Had covetous men, as the fable goes of Bria-
reus, each of them one hundred hands, they
would all of them be employed in grasping and
gathering, and hardly one of them in giving or
laying out, but all in receiving and none in re-
storing: a thing in itself so monstrous that no-
thing in nature besides is like it, except it be
death and the grave, the only things I know
which are always carrying off the spoils of the
world and never making restitution. For other-
wise, all the parts of the universe, as they bor-
row of one another, so they still pay what they
borrow, and that by so just and well-balanced
an equality that their payments always keep
pace with their receipts. DRYDEN.
We are at best but stewards of what we falsely
call our own ; yet avarice is so insatiable that it
is not in the power of liberality to content it.
SENECA.
There is no vice which mankind carries to
such wild extremes as that of avarice.
SWIFP.
Poverty is in want of much, but avarice of
everything. PUBLIUS SYRUS.
t>4
BACON, FRANCIS.
BACON, FRANCIS.
Since the spirit of Lord Bacon's philosophy
began to be rightly understood, the science of
external nature has advanced with a rapidity
unexampled in the history of all former ages.
The great axiom of his philosophy is so simple
in its nature, and so undeniable in its evidence,
that it is astonishing how philosophers were so
late in acknowledging it, or in being directed
by its authority. It is more than two thousand
years since the phenomena of external nature
were objects of liberal curiosity to speculative
and intelligent men : yet two centuries have
scarcely elapsed since the true path of investi-
gation has been rightly pursued and steadily
persevered in ; since the evidence of experience
has been received as paramount to every other
evidence; or, in other words, since philoso-
phers have agreed, that the only way to learn
the magnitude of an object is to measure it, the
only way to learn its tangible properties is to
touch it, and the only way to learn its visible
properties is to look at it.
DR. T. CHALMERS :
Evidences of Christianity, ch. viii.
At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether
incorrect to say, as has often been said, that he
was the first man who rose up against the Aris-
totelian philosophy when in the height of its
power. The authority of that philosophy had,
as we have shown, received a fatal blow long
before he was born. Several speculators, among
whom Ramus is the best known, had recently
attempted to form new sects. Bacon's own ex-
pressions about the state of public opinion in the
time of Luther are clear and strong: " Acce-
debat," says he, " odium et contemptus, illis
ipsis temporibus ortus erga Scholasticus." And
again, " Scholasticorum doctrina despectui pror-
sus haberi ccepit tanquam aspera et barbara."
[Both these passages are in the first book of the
De Augmentis.] The part which Bacon played
in this great change was the part, not of Robes-
pierre, but of Bonaparte. The ancient order of
things had been subverted. Some bigots still
cherished with devoted loyalty the remembrance
of the fallen monarchy and exerted themselves
to effect a restoration. But the majority had no
such feeling. Freed, yet not knowing how to
use their freedom, they pursued no determinate
course, and had found no leader capable of con-
ducting them.
That leader at length arose. The philosophy
which he taught was essentially new. It differed
ftom that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not
merely in method, but also in object. Its object
H-as the good of mankind, in the sense in which
the mass of mankind always have understood
and always will understand the word good.
" Meditor," said Bacon, "instaurationem philo-
sophise ejusmodi quse nihil inanis aut abstracti
habeat, quaeque vitae humanse conditiones in
melius provehat." [Redargutio Philosophia-
rum.] LORD MACAULAY :
Lord Bacon, July, 1837.
The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be
this : that he invented a new method of arriving
at truth, which method is called Induction, and
that he detected some fallacy in the syllogistic
reasoning which had been in vogue before his
time. This notion is about as well founded as
that of the people who, in the middle ages,
imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer.
Many who are too well informed to talk such
extravagant nonsense entertain what we think
incorrect notions as to what Bacon really effected
in this matter.
The inductive method has been practised
ever since the beginning of the world by every
human being. It is constantly practised by the
most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless
school-boy, by the very child at the breast. That
method leads the clown to the conclusion that
if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By
that method the school-boy learns that a cloudy
day is the best for catching trout. The very
infant, we imagine, is led by induction to expect
milk from his mother or nurse, and none frorc
his father.
Not only is it not true that Bacon invented
the inductive method, but it is not true that he
was the first person who correctly analyzed that
method and explained its uses. Aristotle had
long before pointed out the absurdity of sup-
posing that syllogistic reasoning could ever con-
duct men to the discovery of any new prin-
ciple, had shown that such discoveries must be
made by induction, and by induction alone, and
had given the history of the inductive process
concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and
precision. . . . But he [Ba-con] was the person
who first turned the minds of speculative men,
long occupied in verbal disputes, to the dis-
covery of new and useful truth ; and, by doing
so, he at once gave to the inductive method an
importance and dignity which had never before
belonged to it. He was not the maker of that
road ; he was not the discoverer of that road ;
he was not the person who first surveyed and
mapped that road. But he was the person who
first called the public attention to an inexhaust-
ible mine of wealth, which had been utterly
neglected, and which was accessible by that road
alone. By doing so he caused that road, which
had previously been trodden only by peasants
and higglers, to be frequented by a higher class
of travellers.
LORD MACAULAY : Lord Bacon.
That which was eminently his own in his
[Bacon's] system was the end which he pro-
posed to himself. The end being given, the
means, as it appears to us, could not well be
mistaken. If others had aimed at the same
object with Bacon, we hold it to be certain that
they would have employed the same method
with Bacon. It would have been hard to con-
vince Seneca that the inventing of a safety-lamp
was an employment worthy of a philosopher.
It would have been hard to persuade Thomas
Aquinas to descend from the making of syllo-
gisms to the making of gunpowder. But Seneca
BACON, FRANCIS. BEARDS.
would never have doubted for a moment that it
was only by means of a series of experiments
that a safety-lamp could be invented. Thomas
Aquinas would never have thought that his
barbara and baralipton would enable him to
ascertain the proportion which charcoal ought
to bear to saltpetre in a pound of gunpowder.
Neither common sense nor Aristotle would have
suffered him to fall into such an absurdity. By
stimulating men to the discovery of new truth,
Bacon stimulated them to employ the inductive
method, the only method, even the ancient phi-
losophers and the schoolmen themselves being
judges, by which new truth can be discovered.
By stimulating men to the discovery of useful
truth he furnished them with a motive to per-
form the inductive process well and carefully.
His predecessors had been, in his phrase, not
interpreters, but anticipators, of nature. They
had been content with the first principles at
which they had arrived by the most scanty and
slovenly induction. And why was this? It was,
we conceive, because their philosophy proposed
to itself no practical end, because it was merely
an exercise of the mind. . . . What Bacon did
for inductive philosophy may, we think, be fairly
slated thus : The objects of preceding speculators
were objects which could be attained without
careful induction, Those speculators, therefore,
did not perform the inductive process carefully.
Bacon stirred up men to pursue an object which
could be attained only by induction, and by in-
duction carefully performed ; and consequently
induction was more carefully performed. We
do not think that the importance of what Bacon
did for inductive philosophy has ever been over-
tated. But we think that the nature of his ser-
vices is often mistaken, and was not fully under-
stood even by himself. It was not by furnishing
philosophers with rules for performing the in-
ductive process well, but by furnishing them with
a motive for performing it well, that he conferred
so vast a benefit on society. To give to the human
mind a direction which it shall retain for ages
is the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits.
It cannot, therefore, be uninteresting to inquire
what was the moral and intellectual constitution
which enabled Bacon to exercise so vast an in-
fluence on the world.
LORD MACAULAY: Lord Bacon.
It is easy to perceive from the scanty remains
of his oratory that the same compactness of
expression and richness of fancy which appear
in his writings characterized his speeches ; and
that his extensive acquaintance with literature
and history enabled him to entertain his audi-
ence with a vast variety of illustrations and
allusions which were generally happy and ap-
posite, but which -were probably not least
pleasing to the taste of that age when they were
such as would now be thought childish or pe-
dantic. It is evident also that he was, as indeed
might have been expected, perfectly free from
those faults which are generally found in an
advocate who, after having risen to eminence at
the bar, enters the House of Commons ; that it
was his habit to deal with every great question,
not in small detached portions, but as a whole;
that he refined little, and that his reasonings
were those of a capacious rather than a subtle
mind. Ben Jonson, a most unexceptionable,
judge, has decribed Bacon's eloquence in words,
which, though often quoted, will liear to be
quoted again. " There happened in my time
one noble speaker who was full of gravity in
his speaking. His language, where he could
spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious.
No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly,
more weighty, or suffered less emptiness, les<
idleness, in what he uttered. No member of
his speech but consisted of his own graces
His hearers could not cough or look aside from
him without loss. He commanded where he
spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at
his devotion. No man had their affections
more in his power. The fear of every man
that heard him was lest he should make an
end." From the mention which is made of
judges, it would seem that Jonson had heard
Bacon only at the Bar. Indeed, we imagine
that the House of Commons was then almost
inaccessible to strangers. It is not probable
that a man of Bacon's nice observation would
speak in Parliament exactly as he spoke in the
Court of Queen's Bench. But the graces of
manner and language must, to a great extent,
have been common between the Queen's Coun-
sel and the Knight of the Shire.
LORD MACAULAY:
Lord Bacon, July, 1837.
Now, Bacon is a striking instance of a genius
who could think so profoundly, and at the same
time so clearly, that an ordinary man under-
stands readily most of his wisest sayings, and
perhaps thinks them so self-evident as hardly to
need mention. But, on reconsideration ami
repeated meditation, you perceive more and
more what extensive and important applications
one of his maxims will have, and how often it
has been overlooked; and on returning to it
again and again, fresh views of its importance
will continually open on you. One t>f his say-
ings will be like some of the heavenly bodies
that are visible to the naked eye, but in which
you see continually more and more, the better
the telescope you apply to them.
The " dark sayings," on the contrary, of some
admired writers may be compared to a fog-bank
at sea, which the navigator at first glance takes
for a chain of majestic mountains, but which,
when approached closely, or when viewed
through a good glass, proves to be a mere mass
of unsubstantial vapours. WKATELY :
Pref. to Bacon's Essays
BEARDS.
The beard, conformable to the notion of mf
friend Sir Roger, was for many ages looked
upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than
once rallies the philosophers of his time who
66
BEARDS. BE A UTY.
endeavoured to rival one another in beards;
and represents a learned m;in who stood for a
professorship in philosophy, as unqualified for it
by the shortness of his beard.
/Elian, in his account of Zoilus, the pre-
tended critic, who wrote against Homer and
Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who
had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus
had a very long beard that hung down upon his
breast, but no hair upon his head, which he
always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems,
the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which,
if they had been suffered to grow, might have
drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and
by that means have starved his beard.
I have read somewhere that one of the popes
refused to accept an edition of a saint's works,
which were presented to him, because the saint,
in his effigies before the book, was drawn with-
out a beard.
We see by these instances what homage the
world has formerly paid to beards; and that a
barber was not then allowed to make those
depredations on the faces of the learned which
have been permitted him of late years.
BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 331.
If we look into the history of our own nation,
we shall find that the beard flourished in the
Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discour-
aged under the Norman line. It shot out, how-
ever, from time to time, in several reigns under
different shapes. The last effort it made seems
to have been in Queen Mary's days, as the
curious reader may find, if he pleases to peruse
the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gar-
diner ; though, at the same time, I think it may
be questioned, if zeal against popery has not
induced our Protestant painters to extend the
beards of these two persecutors beyond their
natural dimensions, in order to make them
appear the more terrible.
I find but few beards worth taking notice of
in the reign of King James the First.
During the civil wars there appeared one,
\\-hich makes too great a figure in story to be
passed over in silence; I mean that of the re-
doubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler
has transmitted to posterity in the following
lines :
" His tawny beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face ;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile ;
The upper part thereof was whey,
The nether, orange mixt with gray."
BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 331.
There is great truth in Alphonse Karr's re-
mark that modern men are ugly because they
don't wear their beards. Take a fine man of
forty with a handsome round Medicean beard
(not a pointed Jew's beard) ; look at him well,
so as to retain his portrait in your mind's eye;
and '.hen shave him close, leaving him, per-
haps, out of charity, a couple of muttcn-chop
whiskers, one on each cheek, and you will see
the humiliating difference. And if you "elect
an old mar. of seventy for your experiment, and
convert a snowy-bearded head that might sit for
a portrait in a historical picture, into a close-
scraped weazen-faced visage, like an avaricious
French peasant on his way to haggle for swine
at a monthly franc-marche, the descent from the
sublime to the ridiculous is still more painfully
apparent. Household Words.
During hundreds of years it was the custom
in England to wear beards. It became, in course
of time, one of our Insularities to shave close.
Whereas, in almost all the other countries of
Europe, more or less of moustache and beard
was habitually worn, it came to be established
in this speck of an island, as an Insularity from
which there was no appeal, that an Englishman,
whether he liked it or not, must hew, hack, and
rasp his chin and upper lip daily. The incon-
venience of this infallible test of British respect-
ability was so widely felt, that fortunes were
made by razors, razor-strops, hones, pastes,
shaving-soaps, emollients for the soothing of the
tortured skin, all sorts of contrivances to lessen
the misery of the shaving process and diminish
the amount of time it occupied.
Household Words.
BEAUTY.
There is nothing that makes its way more
directly to the soul than beauty, which imme-
diately diffuses a secret satisfaction and compla-
cency through the imagination, and gives a
finishing to anything that is great or uncommon.
The very first discoveiy of it strikes the mind
with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness
and delight through all its faculties.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 412.
There is a second kind of beauty that we find
in the several products of art and nature; which
does not work in the imagination with that
warmth and violence as the beauty that appears
in our proper species, but is apt, however, to
raise in us a secret delight, and a kind of fond-
ness for the places or objects in which we dis-
cover it. This consists either in the gaiety or
variety of colours, in the symmetry and propor-
tion of parts, in the arrangement and disposition
of bodies, or in a just mixture and concurrence
of all together. Among these several kinds of
beauty the eye takes most delight in colours.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 412.
The head has the most beautiful appearance,
as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
Nature has laid out all her art in beautifying the
face; she has touched it with vermilion, planted
in ifa double row of ivory, made it the seat of
smiles and blushes, lighted it up and enlivened
it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it on
each side with curious organs of sense, given it
airs and graces that cannot be described, and
surrounded it with such a flowing shade of hair
as sets all its beauties in the most agreeabi*
BEAUTY.
light. In short, she seems to have designed the
head is the cupola to the most glorious of her
works. ADDISON.
Before I made this remark, I wondered to see
the Roman poets in their description of a beau-
tiful man so often mention the turn of his neck
and arms. ADDISON.
Ask any of the husbands of your great beau-
lies, and they will tell you that they hate their
wives nine hours of every day they pass to-
gether. There is such a particularity ever af-
fected by them that they are encumbered with
their charms in all they say or do. They pray
tit public devotions as they are beauties. They
converse on ordinary occasions as they are
beauties. . . . Good nature will always supply
the absence of beauty, but beauty cannot long
supply the absence of good nature.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 306.
In beauty, that of favour is more than that of
colour; and that of decent and gracious motion
more than that of favour. That is the best part
of beauty \\hich a picture cannot express; no,
nor the first sight of the life. There is no ex-
cellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in
the proportion. LORD BACON :
Essay XL IV., Of Beauty.
A man shall see faces that, if you examine
them part by part, you shall find never a good ;
and yet altogether do well. If it be true that
the principal part of beauty is in decent motion,
certainly it is no marvel though persons in years
seem many times more amiable: " pulchorum
nutumnus pulcher ;" for no youth can be comely
but by pardon, and considering the youth as to
make up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer
fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and that can-
not last; and for the most part, it makes a dis-
solute youth, and an age a little out of counte-
nance : but yet certainly again, if it light well,
it maketh virtues shine and vices blush.
LORD BACON : Essay XLIV., Of Beauty.
Expression is of more consequence than
shape; it will light up features otherwise heavy.
SIR C. BELL.
Female beauties are as fickle in their faces as
their minds ; though casualties should spare
them, age brings in a necessity of decay ; leav-
ing doters upon red and white perplexed by
pcertainty both of the continuance of their mis-
tress's kindness and her beauty, both of which
are necessary to the amorist's joy and quiet.
BOYLE.
Exalt your passion by directing and settling it
upon an object the due contemplation of whose
loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received
from mortal beauty. BOYLE.
I cannot understand the importance which
certain people set upon outward beauty or plain-
ness. I am of opinion that all true education,
such at least as has a religious foundation, must
infuse a noble calm, a wholesome coldness, an
indifference, or whatever people may call it,
towards such-like outward gifts, or the want
of them. And who has not experienced of how
little consequence they are in fact for the weal
or woe of life ? Who has not experienced how,
on nearer acquaintance, plainness becomes beau-
tified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly ac-
cording to the quality of the heart and mind ?
And from this cause am I of opinion that the
want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble
nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It
nevei can prevent people from being amiable
and beloved in the highest degree; and we
have daily proof of this.
FREDERIKA BREMER.
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fra-
gility, is almost essential to it [beauty].
BURKE.
Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It un-
folds to the numberless flowers of the spring ; it
waves in the branches of the trees and the green
blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the
earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues
of the shell and the precious stone. And not
only these minute objects, but the ocean, the
mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars,
the rising and setting sun, all overflow with
beauty. The universe is its temple ; and those
men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes
without feeling themselves encompassed with it
on every side. Now, this beauty is so precious,
the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure,
so congenial with our tenderest and noble&t
feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is pain-
ful to think of the multitude of men as living
in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to
it as if, instead of !his fair earth and glorious
sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An in-
finite joy is lost to the world by the want of
culture of this spiritual endowment. The
greatest truths are wronged if not linked with
beauty, and they win their way most surely and
deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their
natural and fit attire.
W. ELLERY CHANNING.
It was a very proper answer to him who asked
why any man should be delighted with beauty,
that it was a question that none but a blind man
could ask. LORD CLARENDON.
A graceful presence bespeaks acceptance,
gives a force to language, and helps to convince
by look and posture. JEREMY COLLIER.
Beauty is nothing else but a just accord and
mutual harmony of the members, animated by
a healthful constitution.
Dryden's Dufresnoy, Pref.
There are of these sorts of beauties which
last but for a moment; as the different airs of
an assembly upon the sight of an unexpected
and uncommon object ; some particularity of a
violent passion, some graceful passion, some
graceful action, a smile, a glance of an eye, a
disdainful look, a look of gravity, and a thou-
sand other such-like things.
Dryderi's Ditfresnoy.
68
BEAUTY.
Beauty is only that which makes all things as
they are in their proper and perfect nature;
which the best painters always choose by con-
templating the forms of each. DRYDEN.
The most important part of painting is to
know what is most beautiful in nature ; that
which is most beautiful is the most noble sub-
ject. DRYDEN.
Beauty charms, sublimity moves us, and is
often accompanied with a feeling resembling
fear, while beauty rather attracts and draws us
towards it. FLEMING.
The fashion of the day should always be re-
flected in a woman's dress, according to her
position and age; the eye craves for variety as
keenly as the palate ; and then, I honestly pro-
test, a naturally good-looking woman is always
Tiandsome. For, happily, there exists more than
one kind of beauty. There is the beauty of
infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of ma-
turity, and, believe me, ladies and gentlemen,
the beauty of age, if you do not spoil it by
your own want of judgment. At any age, a
woman may be becomingly and pleasingly
dressed Household Words.
Leanness, hitherto, has been considered a re-
proach, rather than a merit, either in an indi-
vidual or a nation. . . . We cannot fancy a fat
Macbeth; a corpulent traitor in Venice Pre-
served, or an obese lago, are impossibilities.
Assuredly, Falstaff was not scrupulously honest
or honourable ; but what was he, after all, but
a merry rogue ? Plumpness and beauty have
often been regarded as inseparable Siamese
twins, from the illustrious regent whose ideal
of female loveliness was summed up in " fat,
fair, and forty," to the Egyptians who fattened
their dames systematically, by making them sit
in a bath of chicken -broth ; the etiquette being
that the lady under treatment is to eat, while
sitting in the broth-bath, one whole chicken of
the number of those of which the bath was
made, and that she is to repeat both bath and
dose for many days. A doubt, one should
think, must have sometimes arisen, whether the
beauty thus in training would fatten or choke
first. Hoitsehold Words.
I can tell Parthenissa, for her comfort, that
the beauties, generally speaking, are the most
impertinent and disagreeable of women. An
apparent desire of admiration, a reflection upon
their own merit, and a precise behaviour in their
general .conduct, are almost inseparable acci-
dents in beauties. All you obtain of them is
granted ;to importunity and solicitation for what
did not deserve so much of your time, and you
recover from the possession of it as out of a
dream.
You are ashamed of the vagaries of fancy
which so strangely misled you, and your admi-
ration of a beauty, merely as such, is incon-
sistent with a tolerable reflection upon yourself.
The cheerful good-humoured creatures, into
whose heads it -never entered that they could
make any man unhappy, are the persons formed
for making men happy.
HUGHES : Spectator, No. 306.
Take the whole sex together, and you find
those who have the strongest possession of men's
hearts are not eminent for their beauty. You
see it often happen that those who engage men
to the greatest violence are such as those who
are strangers to them would take to be remark-
ably defective for that end.
HUGHES: Spectator, No. 306.
He will always see the most beauty whose
affections are warmest and most exercised,
whose imagination is the most powerful, and
who has the most accustomed himself to attend
to the objects by which he is surrounded.
LORD JEFFREY.
Beauty consists of a certain composition of
colour and figure, causing delight in the be-
holder. LOCKE.
Beauty or unbecomingness are of more force
to draw or deter imitation than any discourses
which. can be made to them. LOCKE.
No better cosmetics than a severe temperance
and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious
temper and calmness of spirit; no true beauty
without the signature of these graces in the
very countenance.
RAY : On the Creation.
We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from
beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which
we know not the rules, and a secret conformity
of the features to each other, and to the air and
complexion of the person.
ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Beauty and use can so well agree together
that of all the trinkets wherewith they are
attired there is not one but serves to some neces-
sary purpose. SIR P. SIDNEY.
He that is comely when old and decrepil
surely was very beautiful when he was young.
SOUTH.
Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny ;
Plato, privilege of nature ; Theophrastus, a silent
cheat ; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice ; Carne-
ades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said that
nothing was more grateful ; Aristotle affirmed
that beauty was better than all the letters of
recommendation in the world; Homer, thai
'twas a glorious gift of nature ; and Ovid calls
it a favour bestowed by the gods.
SOUTHGATE.
Though colour be the lowest of all the con-
stituent parts of beauty, yet it is vulgarly the
most .striking. JOSEPH SPENCE.
As to the latter species of mankind, the beau-
ties, whether male or female, they are generally
the most untractable people of all others. You
are so excessively perplexed with the particu-
larities in their behaviour, that to be at ease,
one would be apt to wish there were no suck
BE A UTY.BENE VOLENCE. BIBLE.
69
creature;:. They expect so great allowances,
and give so little to others, that they who have
to deal with them find, in the main, a man with
a better person than ordinary, and a beautiful
woman, might be very happily changed for such
to whom nature has been less liberal. The
handsome fellow is usually so much a gentle-
man, and the fine woman has something so be-
coming, that there is no enduring either of them.
It has therefore been generally my choice to mix
with cheerful ugly creatures, rather than gentle-
men who are graceful enough to omit or do
what they please, or beauties who have charms
enough to do and say what would be disobliging
in anybody but themselves.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 87.
Beauty has been the delight and torment of
the world ever since it began. The philosophers
have felt its influence so sensibly that almost
every one of them has left some saying or other
which intimated that he knew too well the
power of it. One has told us that a graceful
person is a more powerful recommendation than
the best letter that can be writ in your favour.
Another desires the possessor of it to consider it
as a mere gift of nature, and not any perfection
of its own. A third calls it a " short-lived tyr-
anny ;" a fourth, a " silent fraud," because it
imposes upon us without the help of language.
But I think Carneades spoke as much like a
philosopher as any of them, though more like a
lover, when he calls it " royalty without force/'
It is not indeed to be denied but there is some-
thing irresistible in a beauteous form; the most
severe will not pretend that they do not feel an
immediate prepossession in favour of the hand-
some. SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 143.
You may keep your beauty and your health,
unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage
them to stay with you, by using them ill.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
BENEVOLENCE.
Rare benevolence, the minister of God.
CARLYLE.
The paternal and filial duties discipline the
heart and prepare it for the love of all mankind.
The intensity of private attachment encourages,
not prevents, universal benevolence.
COLERIDGE.
We have every reason to conclude that moral
action extends over the whole empire of God,
that Benevolence exerts its noblest energies
among the inhabitants of distant worlds, and
that it is chiefly through the medium of recip-
rocal kindness and affection that ecstatic joy
pervades the hearts of celestial intelligences.
For we cannot conceive happiness to exist in
any region of space, or among any class of in-
tellectual beings, where love to the Creator and
to one another is not a prominent and perma-
nent affection. DR. T. DICK :
Philos. of a Future State, Part I., Sec. VI.
A beneficent person is like a fountain water-
ing the earth and spreading fertility: it is: there-
fore more delightful and more honourable to
give than receive. EPICURUS.
Is the force of self-love abated, or its interest
prejudiced, by benevolence? So far from it,
that benevolence, though a distinct principle, is
extremely serviceable to self-love, and then doth
most service when it is least designed. . . . And
then, as to that charming delight which imme-
diately follows the giving joy to another, or
relieving his sorrow, and is, when the objects
are numerous, and the kindness of importance,
really inexpressible, what can this be owing to
but a consciousness of a man's having done
something praiseworthy, and expressive of a
great. soul? GROVE: Spectator, No. 588.
Though it cannot be denied that, by diffusing
a warmer colouring over the visions of fancy,
sensibility is often a source of exquisite pleasure,
to others, if not to the possessor, yet it
should never be confounded with benevolence,
since it constitutes, at best, rather the ornament
of a fine than the virtues of a good mind.
ROBERT HALL.
In order to render men benevolent they must
first be made tender : for benevolent affections
are not the offspring of reasoning : they result
from that culture of the heart, from those early
impressions of tenderness, gratitude, and sym-
pathy, which the endearments of domestic life
are sure to supply, and for the formation of
which 't is the best possible school.
ROBERT HALL : Modern Infidelity.
Benevolence is a duty. He who frequently
practises it, and sees his benevolent intentions
realized, at length comes really to love him to
whom he has done good. When, therefore, it
is said, " Thou shall love thy neighbour as thy-
self," it is not meant, thou shall love him first,
and do good to him in consequence of that love,
but, thou shall do good to thy neighbour, and
this thy beneficence will engender in'thee that
love to mankind which is the fulness and con-
summation of the inclination to do good.
EMMANUEL KANT.
A benevolent disposition is, no doubt, a great
help towards a course of uniform practical be-
nevolence ; but let no one Irust to it, when there
are other strong propensities, and no firm good
principle. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Goodnesi,
and Goodness of Nature.
BIBLE.
By the way, how much more comfortable, as
well as rational, is this system of the Psalmist
[Psalm cvii.] than the pagan scheme in Virgil
and other poets, where one deily is represenled
as raising a slorm, and another as laying it !
Were we only to consider the sublime in this
BIBLE.
piece of poetry, what can be nobler than the
idea it gives u? of the Supreme Being thus
raising a tumult among the elements and recov-
ering them out of their confusion?
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 489.
Many particular facts are recorded in holy
wiil attested by particular pagan authors.
ADDISON.
There is no passion that it is not finely ex-
pressed in those parts of the inspired writings
which are proper for divine songs and anthems.
ADDISON.
They who are not induced to believe and live
as they ought, by those discoveries which God
hath made in Scripture, would stand out against
any evidence whatever; even that of a messen-
ger sent express from the other world.
ATTERBURY.
As those wines which flow from the first
treading of the grapes are sweeter and better
than those forc'ed out by the press, which gives
them the roughness of the husk and the stone,
so are those doctrines best and sweetest which
flow from a gentle crush of the Scriptures and
are not wrung into controversies and common-
places. LORD BACON.
The scope or purpose of the Spirit of God is
not to express matters of nature in Scripture
otherwise than in passage, for application to
man's capacity, and to matters moral and
divine. LORD BACON.
There is not a book on earth so favourable to
all the kind, and to all the sublime, affections,
or so unfriendly to hatred and persecution, to
tyranny, injustice, and every sort of malevolence,
as the GOSPEL. It breathes nothing through-
out but mercy, benevolence, and peace. . . . Such
of the doctrines of the gospel as are level to
human capacity appear to be agreeable to the
purest truth and soundest morality. All the
genius and learning of the heathen world, all
the penetration of Pythagoras, Socrates, and
Aristotle, had never been able to produce such
a system of moral duty, and so rational an ac-
count of Providence and of man, as is to be
found in the New Testament. BEATTIE.
The Bible is a precious storehouse, and the
Magna Charta of a Christian. There he reads
of his heavenly Father's love, and of his dying
Saviour's legacies. There he sees a map of his
travels through the wilderness, and a landscape,
too, of Canaan. And when he climbs on Pis-
gah'; top, and views the promised land, his
heart begins to burn, delighted with the blessed
prospect, and amazed at the rich and free sal-
vation. But a mere professor, though a decent
one, looks on the Bible as a dull book, and
peruseth it with such indifference as you would
read the title-deeds belonging to another man's
estate. BERRIDGE.
It is not oftentimes so much what the Scrip-
ture says, as what some men persuade others it
says, that makes it seem obscure; and that, as
to some other passages, that are so indeed
(since it is the abstruseness of what is taught in
them that makes them almost inevitably so), it
is little less saucy, upon such a score, to find
fault with the style of the Scripture, than to do
so with the Author for making us but men.
BOYLE : On the Scriptures.
If there be an analogy or likeness between
that system of things and dispensation of Provi-
dence which revelation. informs us of, and that
system of things and dispensation of Providence
which experience, together with reason, informs
us of, that is, the known course of nature ; this
is a presumption that they have both the came
author and cause, at least so far as to answer
the objections against the former's being from
God, drawn from anything which is analogical
or similar to what it is in the latter, which is
acknowledged to be from him.
BISHOP BUTLER : Analogy.
But what is meant, after all, by uneducated, in
a time when Books have come into the world
come to be household furniture in every habita-
tion of the civilized world? In the poorest
cottage are Books is one BOOK, wherein for
several thousands of years the spirit of man has
found light and nourishment and an interpreting
response to whatever is Deepest in him.
CARLYLE.
I call that [the Book of Job], apart from all
theories about it, one of the grandest things ever
written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it
were not Hebrew; such a noble universality,
different from noble patriotism, or sectarianism,
reigns in it. A noble book! all men's book!
It is our first, oldest statement of the never-
ending problem, man's destiny, and God's ways
with him here in this earth. And all in such
free flowing outlines ; grand in its sincerity, in
its simplicity, in its epic melody and repose of
reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the
mildly understanding heart. So true every way ;
true eyesight and vision for all things; material
things no less than spiritual : the horse, " Hast
thou clothed his neck with thunder?' 1 ' 1 "he
laughs at the shaking of the spear !" Such living
likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sor-
row, sublime reconciliation ; oldest choral mel-
ody as of the heart of mankind ; so soft and
great; as the summer midnight, as the world
with its seas and stars ! there is nothing written,
I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal
literary merit. CARLYLE.
Prize and study the Scripture. We can have
no delight in meditation on him unless we
know him ; and we cannot know him but by the
means of his own revelation ; when the reve-
lation is despised, the revealer will be of little
esteem. Men do not throw off God from being
their rule, till they throw off Scripture from
being their guide ; and' God must needs be cast
off from being an end, when the Scripture is
rejected from being a rule. Those that do not
care to know his will, that love to be ignorant
BIBLE.
of his nature, can never be affected to his hon-
our. Let therefore the subtleties of reason Vail
to the doctrine of faith, and the humour of the
will to the command of the word.
CllARNOCK : Attributes.
There was plainly wanting a divine revelation
to recover mankind out of their universal cor-
ruption and degeneracy. DR. S. CLARKE.
For more than a thousand years the Bible,
collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with
civilization, science, law in short, with the
moral and intellectual cultivation of the species
always supporting, and often leading the way.
Its very presence, as a believed Book, has ren-
dered the nations emphatically a chosen race ;
and this, too, in exact proportion as it is more
or less generally known and studied. Of those
nations which in the highest degree enjoy its
influences it is not too much to affirm that the
differences, public and private, physical, moral,
and intellectual, are only less than what might
have been expected from a diversity of species.
Good and holy men, and the best and wisest of
mankind, the kingly spirits of history, enthroned
in the hearts of mighty nations, have borne
witness to its influences, have declared it to be
beyond compare the mo.st perfect instrument of
Humanity. COLERIDGE.
It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to
reflect that our knowledge is but as the rivulet,
our ignorance as the sea. On points of the
highest interest, the moment we quit the light
of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself
is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the
deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.
COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
What can we imagine more proper for the
ornaments of wit and learning in the story of
Deucalion than in that of Noah ? Why will
not the actions of Samson afford as plentiful
matter as the labours of Hercules ? Why is not
Jephthah's daughter as good a woman as Iphi-
genia ? and the friendship of David and Jon-
athan more worthy celebration than that of
Theseus and Pirithous? Does not the passage
of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land
yield incomparably more poetic variety than the
voyages of Ulysses or /Eneas ? Are the obsolete,
threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy half so
stored with great, heroical, and supernatural
actions (since verse will needs find or make
such) as the wars of Joshua, of the Judges, of
David, and divers others? Can all the trans-
formations of the gods give such copious hints
t ) flourish and expatiate upon as the true mira-
cles of Christ, or of his prophets and apostles ?
What do I instance in these few particulars?
All the books of the Bible are either already
most admirable and exalted pieces of poesy, or
are the best materials in the world for it.
COWLEY : Davideis, Preface.
The parable of the prodigal son, the most
beautiful fiction that ever was invented; our
Saviour's speech to his disciples, with which he
closes -his earthly ministration, full of the sub-
limest dignity and tenderest affection, surpass
everything that I ever read ; and, like the Spirit
by which they were dictated, fly directly to the
heart. COWI-KR :
To Lady Hesketh, August I, 1765.
The highest historical probability can be Se-
duced in support of the proposition, that, if it
were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with
it all its influences, we should destroy with it the
whole spiritual system of the moral world all
our great moral ideas refinement of manners
constitutional government equitable adminis-
tration and security of property our schools,
hospitals, and benevolent associations the press
the fine arts the equality of the sexes, and
the blessings of the fireside ; in a word, all that
distinguishes Europe and America from Turkey
and Hindostan. EDWARD EVERETT.
Who will say that the uncommon beauty and
marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is
not one of the strongholds of heresy in this
country? It lives on the ear like a music that
can never be forgotten, like the sound of church
bells, which the convert hardly knows how he
can forego. Its felicities often seem to be al-
most things rather than mere words. It is part
of the national mind, and the anchor of national
seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a posi-
tive idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fa-
naticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly
with the man of letters and the scholar. The
memory of the dead passes into it. The potent
traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its
phrases. The power of all the griefs and trials
of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the
representative of his best moments ; and all that
there has been about him of soft, and gentle,
and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him
forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred
thing, which doubt has never dimmed and con-
troversy never soiled. It has been to him all
along as the silent, but oh, how intelligible, voice
of his guardian angel ; and in the length and
breadth of the land there is not a .Protestant
with one spark of religiousness about him whose
spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible.
F. W. FABER (Roman Catholic) :
Quoted in Dublin Rev., June, 1853.
In comparison of these divine writers the
noblest wits of the heathen world are low and
dull. FELTON.
The SCRIPTURES teach us the best way of liv-
ing, the noblest way of suffering, and the most
comfortable way of dying. FLAVEL.
The peculiar genius, if such a word may be per-
mitted, which breathes through it, the mingled
tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity,
the preternatural grandeur, unequalled, unar-
proached, in the attempted improvements of
modern scholars, all are here, and bear th:
impress of the mind of one man, and that man
William Tyndale. J. A. FROUDE .
History of England
BIBLE.
It is a belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep
meditation, which has served me as the guide
of my moral and literary life. I have found it
a capital safely invested and richly productive
of interest. GOETHE.
A stream where alike the elephant may swim
and the lamb may wade.
GREGORY THE GREAT.
The Christian faith has been, and is still, very
fiercely and obstinately attacked. How many
efforts have been made and are still made, how
many books, serious or frivolous, able or silly,
have been and are spread incessantly, in order
to destroy it in men's minds ! Where has this
redoubtable struggle been supported with the
greatest energy and success ? and where has
Christian faith been best defended ? There
where the reading of the Sacred Books is a gen-
eral and assiduous part of public worship, there
where it takes place in the interior of families
and in solitary meditation. It is the Bible, the
Bible itself, which combats and triumphs most
efficaciously in the war between incredulity and
belief. ^ GUIZOT.
There is no book like the Bible for excellent
learning, wisdom, and use.
SIR MATTHEW HALE.
The veneration we shall feel for the Bible as
the depository of saving knowledge will be to-
tally distinct, not only from what we attach to any
other book, but from that admiration its other
properties inspire ; and the variety and antiquity
of its history, the light it affords in various
researches, its inimitable touches of nature, to-
gether with the sublimity and beauty so copi-
ously poured over its pages, will be deemed
subsidiary ornaments, the embellishments of the
casket which contains the/^ar/ of great price.
ROBERT HALL :
Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower Classes.
To say nothing of the inimitable beauties of
the Bible, considered in a literary view, which
are universally acknowledged, it is the book
which every devout man is accustomed to con-
sult as the oracle of God ; it is the companion
of his best moments, and the vehicle of his
strongest consolations. Intimately associated in
his mind with everything dear and valuable, its
diction more powerfully excites devotional feel-
ings than any other; and when temperately and
soberly used, imparts an unction to a religious
discourse which nothing else can supply.
ROBERT HALL:
Review of Foster 's Essays.
If an uninterested spectator, after a careful
perusal of the New Testament, were asked what
he conceived to be its distinguishing character-
istic, he would reply, without hesitation, " That
wonderful spirit of philanthropy by which it is
distinguished." It is a perpetual commentary
on that sublime aphorism, God is love.
ROBERT HALL:
Address to the Rev. Eustace Carey.
Revelation will soon be discerned to be ex-
tremely conducible to reforming men's lives,
such as will answer all objections and excep-
tions of flesh and blood against it.
HAMMOND.
All human discoveries seem to be made only
for the purpose of confirming more strongly the
truths come from on high, and contained in the
sacred writings.
SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL.
With whom ordinary means will prevail,
surely the power of the word of God, even
without the help of interpreters, in God's church
worketh mightily, not unto their confirmation
alone which are converted, but also to their
conversion which are not. HOOKER.
Unto the word of God, being, in respect ot
that end for which God ordained it, perfect,
exact, and absolute in itself, we do not add
reason as a supplement of any maim or defect
therein, but as a necessary instrument, without
which we could not reap by the Scripture's per-
fection that fruit and benefit which it yieldeth.
HOOKER.
The reading of Scripture is effectual, as well
to lay even the first foundation, as to add de-
grees of farther perfection, in the fear of God.
HOOKER.
The little which some of the heathen did
chance to hear concerning such matter as the
sacred Scripture plentifully containeth, they did
in wonderful sort effect. HOOKER.
Let this be granted, and it shall hereupon
plainly ensue that the light of Scripture once
shining in the world, all other light of nature is
therewith in such sort drowned that now we
need it not. HOOKER.
All those venerable books of Scripture, all
those sacred tomes and volumes of holy writ,
are with such absolute perfection framed.
HOOKER.
The Scripture must be sufficient to imprint in
us the character of all things necessary for the
attainment of eternal life. HOOKER.
The Scripture of God is a storehouse abound-
ing with inestimable treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. HOOKER.
As well for particular application to special
occasions, as also in other manifold respects,
infinite treasures of wisdom are abundantly to
be found in the Holy Scriptures. HOOKER.
Whatsoever to make up the doctrine of man's
salvation is added as in supply of the Scripture's
insufficiency, we reject it. HOOKER.
The choice and flower of all things profitable
in other books, the Psalms do both more briefly
contain, and more movingly also express, by
reason of that poetical form wherewith they are
written. HOOKER.
W T e are astonished to find in a lyrical poem
of such a limited compass [Psalm civ.j the
BIBLE.
73
whole universe the heavens and the earth
sketched with a few bold touches. The calm
and toilsome life of man, from the rising of the
sun to the setting of the same when his daily
work is done, is here contrasted with the moving
life of the elements of nature. This contrast
and generalization in the conception of natural
phenomena, and the retrospection of an om-
nipresent, invisible Power, which can renew the
earth or crumble it to dust, constitute a solemn
and exalted form of poetic creation.
HUMBOLDT.
That he was not scrupulously pious in some
part of his life, is known by many idle and in-
decent applications of sentences taken from the
Scriptures ; a mode of merriment which a good
man dreads for its profaneness, and a witty man
disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Pope.
I have carefully and regularly perused these
Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the
volume, independently of its divine origin, con-
tains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty,
purer morality, more important history, and
finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than could
be collected within the same compass from all
other books, in whatever age or language they
may have been written.
SIR WILLIAM JONES.
The general diffusion of the Bible is the most
effectual way to civilize and humanize man-
kind ; to purify and exalt the general system of
public morals; to give efficacy to the just pre-
cepts of international and municipal law; to
enforce the observance of prudence, temperance,
justice, and fortitude; and to improve all the
relations of social and domestic life.
CHANCELLOR KENT.
I am heartily glad to witness your veneration
for a Book which, to say nothing of its holiness
or authority, contains more specimens of genius
and taste than any other volume in existence.
LANDOR : Imaginary Conversations.
There are those that make it a point of bravery
to bid defiance to the oracles of divine revela-
tion. L' ESTRANGE.
That the holy Scriptures are one of the great-
est blessings which God bestows upon the sons
of men is generally acknowledged by all who
know anything of the value and worth of them.
LOCKE.
All that is revealed in Scripture has a conse-
quential necessity of being believed by those to
whom it is proposed, because it is of divine
authority. LOCKE.
It has God for its author, salvation for its
end, and truth, without any mixture of error,
for its matter: it is all pure, all sincere, nothing
too much, nothing wanting. LOCKE.
We should compare places of Scripture treat-
ing of the same point : thus one part of the
sacred text could not fail to give light unto an-
other. LOCKE.
If internal light, or any proposition which
we take for inspired, be conformable to the
principles of reason or to the word of God,
which is attested revelation, reason warrants it.
LOCKE.
Before I translated the New Testament out of
the Greek, all longed for it; when it was done,
their longing lasted scarce four weeks. Then they
desired the books of Moses ; when I had trans-
lated these, they had enough thereof in a nhort
time. After that, they would have the Psalms;
of these they were soon weary, and desired othei
books. So it will be with the book of Ecclesi-
astes, which they now long for, and about which
I have taken great pains. All is acceptable un-
til our giddy brains be satisfied ; afterwards we
let things lie, and seek after new.
LUTHER.
At the time when that odious style which
deforms the writings of Hall and of Lord
Bacon was almost universal, had appeared that
stupendous work, the English Bible, a book
which, if everything else in our language should
perish, would alone suffice to show the whole
extent of its beauty and power. The respect
which the translators felt for the original pre-
vented them from adding any of the hideous
decorations then in fashion. The ground-work
of the version, indeed, was of an earlier age.
LORD MACAULAY:
John Dry den, Jan. 1828.
A man who wishes to serve the cause of re-
ligion ought to hesitate long before he stakes
the truth of religion on the event of a contro-
versy respecting facts in the physical world.
For a time he may succeed in making a theory
which he dislikes unpopular by persuading the
public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is
inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity.
But if at last an overwhelming force of evidence
proves this maligned theory to be true, what
is the effect of the arguments by which the ob-
jector has attempted to prove that it is .irreconcil-
able with natural and revealed religion ? Merely
this, to make men infidels. Like the Israelites
in their battle with the Philistines, he has pre-
sumptuously and without warrant brought down
the ark of God into the camp as a means of in-
suring victory ; and the consequence of this
profanation is that, when the battle is lost, the
ark is taken.
In every age the Church has been cautioned
against this fatal and impious rashness by its
most illustrious members, by the fervid Au-
gustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by the all-accom-
plished Pascal. The warning has been given
in vain. That close alliance which, under the
disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always
subsisted between fanaticism and atheism is still
unbroken. At one time the cry was, " If you
hold that the earth moves round the sun, you
deny the truth of the Bible." Popes, conclaves,
and religious orders rose up against the Coper-
nican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they could
74
BIBLE.
not prevent the earth from moving, or them-
selves from moving along with it.
LORD MACAULAY :
Sadler'' 's Law of Population, July, 1830.
The Scripture affords us a divine pastoral
drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of
two persons and a double chorus, as Origen
rightly judges ; and the Apocalypse of St. John
is a majestic image of a high and stately tragedy,
shutting and intermingling her solemn scenes
and acts with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs
and harping symphonies. And this my opinion,
the grave authority of Pareus, commenting that
book, is sufficient to confirm. Or, if occasion
shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and
hymns, wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are
in most things worthy, some others in their
frame judicious, in their matter most an end
faulty. But those frequent songs, throughout
the laws and prophets, beyond all these, not in
their divine argument alone, but in the very
original art of composition, may be easily made
appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be
incomparable. MlLTON.
It is not hard for any man who hath a Bible
in his hands, to borrow good words and holy
sayings in abundance; but to make them his
own is a work of grace only from above.
MILTON.
There are no songs comparable to the songs
of Zion ; no orations equal to those of the
Prophets; and no politics like those which the
Scriptures teach. MILTON.
All systems of morality are fine. The Gospel
alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of
the principles of morality, divested of all ab-
surdity. It is not composed, like your creed,
of a few commonplace sentences put into bad
verse. Do you wish to see that which is really
sublime ? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
NAPOLEON I.
The Gospel possesses a secret virtue, a mys-
terious efficacy, a warmth which penetrates and
soothes the heart. One finds in meditating upon
it that which one experiences in contemplating
the heavens. The Gospel is not a book ; it is a
living being, with an action, a power, which
invades everything that opposes its extension.
Behold it upon this table, this book surpassing
all others (here the Emperor solemnly placed
his hand upon it)>: I never omit to read it, and
every day with the same pleasure. . . . Not
only is our mind absorbed, it is controlled; and
the soul can never go astray with this book for
its guide. Once master of our spirit, the faithful
Gospel loves us. God even is our friend, our
father, and truly our God. The mother has no
greater care for the infant whom she nurses.
What a proof of the divinity of Christ ! With
an empire so absolute, he has but one single end,
the spiritual melioration of individuals, the
purity of conscience, the union to that which is
t.-ue, the holiness of the soul. . . . If you [Gen-
eral Bertrand] do not perceive that Jesus Christ
is God, very well : then I did wrong to make
you a general.
NAPOLEON I. (at St. Helena) :
See also Sentiment de .A apoleon sur le Chris*
tianisme, Conversations religieuses, re-
cueillies a Sainte-Helenepar M. le Gene-
ral Comte de Montholon : par le Chevalier
de Beaiiterne.
I find more sure marks of the authenticity of
the Bible than in any profane history whatever.
. . . Worshipping God and the Lamb in the
temple: God, for his benefaction in creating all
things, and the Lamb, for his benefaction in re-
deeming us with his blood.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
There is no one book extant in any language
or in any country which can in any degree be
compared with it [the Bible] for antiquity, for
authority, for the importance, the dignity, the
variety, and the curiosity of the matter it con-
tains. BISHOP PORTEUS.
Beware of misapplying Scripture. It is a
thing easily done, but not so easily answered.
I know not any one gap that hath let in more
and more dangerous errors into the Church than
this, that men take the word of the sacred
text, fitted to particular occasions, and to the
condition of the times wherein they were writ-
ten, and then apply them to themselves and
others, as they find them, without due respect
had to the differences that may be between those
times and cases and the present.
BISHOP SANDERSON.
In lyric flow and fire, in crushing force, in
majesty that seems still to echo the awful sounds
once heard beneath the thunder-clouds of Sinai,
the poetry of the ancient Scriptures is the most
superb that ever burned within the breast of
man. The picturesque simplicity of their nar-
ration gives an equal charm to the historical
books. Vigour, beauty, sententiousness, variety,
enrich and adorn the ethical parts of the collec-
tion. SIR DANIEL K. SANDFORD.
The most learned, acute, and diligent student
cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire
knowledge of this one volume. The more
deeply he works the mine, the richer and more
abundant he finds the ore ; new light continually
beams from this source of heavenly knowledge,
to direct the conduct, and illustrate the work of
God and the ways of men; and he will at last
leave the world confessing that the more he
studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he
had of his own ignorance, and of their inesti-
mable value. SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The history I am going to speak of is that
of Joseph in Holy Writ, which is related with
sucrTmajestic simplicity, that all the parts of it
strike us with strong touches of nature and
compassion ; and he must be a stranger to both,
who can read it with attention and not be over-
whelmed with the vicissitudes of joy and sor-
row. I hope it will not be a profanation to tell
it one's own way here, that they who may be
BIBLE. BIBLIOMANIA.
75
inthinking enough to be more frequently readers
5f such papers as this, than of Sacred Writ,
may be advertised that the greatest pleasures
the imagination can be entertained with are to
be found there, and that even the style of the
Scriptures is more than human.
SIR R. STEELE : Taller, No. 233.
No translation our own country ever yet pro-
duced hath come up to that of the Old and New
Testament ; and I am persuaded that the trans-
lators of the Bible were masters of an English
style much fitter for that work than any we see
in our present writings ; the which is owing to
the simplicity that runs through the whole.
SWIFT.
With the history of Moses no book in the
world, in point of antiquity, can contend.
TlLLOTSON.
In Job and the Psalms we shall find more
sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in
any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or
Rome. Dk. I. WATTS.
Many persons have never reflected on the
circumstance that one of the earliest translations
of the Scriptures into a vernacular tongue was
made by the Church of Rome. The Latin Vul-
gate was so called from its being in the vulgar
i.e., the popular language then spoken in
Italy and the neighbouring countries : and that
version was evidently made on purpose that the
Scriptures might be intelligibly read by, or read
to, the mass of the people. But gradually and
imperceptibly Latin was superseded by the lan-
guages derived from it, Italian, Spanish, and
French, while the Scriptures were still left in
Latin; and when it was proposed to translate
them into modern tongues, this was regarded as
a perilous innovation, though it is plain that the
real innovation was that which had taken place
imperceptibly, since the very object proposed
by the Vulgate version was that the Scriptures
might not be left in an unknown tongue.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Innovations.
BIBLIOMANIA.
He is a universal scholar, so far as the title-
page of all authors ; knows the manuscripts in
which they were discovered, the editions through
which they have passed, with the praises or cen-
sures which they have received from the sev-
eral members of the learned world. He has a
greater esteem for Aldus and Elzevir than for
Virgil and Horace. If you talk of Herodotus,
he breaks out into a panegyric upon Harry
Stephens. He thinks he gives you an account
of an author when he tells you the subject he
treats of, the name of the editor, and the year
in which it was printed. Or, if you draw him
into further particulars, he cries up the. goodness
of the paper, extols the diligence of the cor-
rector, and is transported with the beauty of the
letter. This he looks upon to be sound learning
and substantial criticism. As for those who talk
of the fineness of style, and the justness of
thought, or describe the brightness of any par-
ticular passages, nay, though they themselves
write in the genius and spirit of the author they
admire, Tom looks upon them as men of super-
ficial learning and flashy parts.
ADDISON: Tatter, No. 158.
LYSAND. Our friend makes these books a sort
of hobby-horse, and perhaps indulges his vanity
in them to excess. They are undoubtedly useful
in their way.
PHIL. You are averse, then, to the study of
bibliography?
LYSAND. By no means. I have already told
you of my passion for books, and cannot, there-
fore, dislike bibliography. I think, with Lam-
binet, that the greater part of bibliographical
works are sufficiently dry and soporific; but I
am not insensible to the utility, and even enter-
tainment, which may result from a proper culti-
vation of it ; although both De Bure and Peigno!
appear to me to have gone greatly beyond the
mark, in lauding this study as " one of the most
attractive and vast pursuits in which the human
mind can be engaged."
PHIL. But to know what books are valuable
and what are worthless; their intrinsic and ex-
trinsic merits ; their rarity, beauty, and particu-
larities of various kinds ; and the estimation in
which they are consequently held by knowing
men these things add a zest to the gratification
we feel in even looking at and handling certain
volumes. DlBDlN:
Bibliomania, ed. 1842, Pt. II. : The Cabinet, 24.
It was just coming on to the winter of that
same year, a very raw, unpromising season I
well recollect, when I received one morning,
with Messrs. Sotheby's respects, a catalogue of
the extensive library of a distinguished person,
lately deceased, which was about to be sub-
mitted to public competition. Glancing down its
long files of names, my eye lit upon a work I
had long sought and yearned for, and which, in
utter despair, I had set down as introuvable. This
coveted lot was no other than the famed Nu-
remberg Chronicle, printed in black-letter, and
adorned with curious and primitive cuts. At
different times, some stray copies had been of-
fered to me, but these were decayed, maimed,,
cut-down specimens, very different from the one
now before me, which, in the glowing language
of the catalogue, was a " Choice, clean copy, in
admirable condition. Antique richly embossed
binding and metal clasps. A unique and match
less impression." So it was undoubtedly. Foi
the next few days I had no other thought but
that one. I discoursed Nuremberg Chronicle;
I ate, drank, and inhaled nothing but Nurem-
berg Chronicle. I dropped in at stray hours to
look after its safety, and glared savagely at other
parties who were turning over its leaves.
Household Words, March 26, 1857.
BIBLIOMANIA . BIG OTRY. BIO GRAPHY.
But the Chronicle the famous Chronicle ! I
had utterly forgotten it ! I felt a cold thrill all
over me as I took out my watch. Just two
o'clock ! I flew into a cab, and set off at a
headlong pace for Sotheby's. But my fatal pre-
sentiment was to be verified. It was over ; I
was too late. The great Chronicle, the choice,
the beautiful, the unique, had passed from me
forever, and beyond recall ; and, as I after-
wards learned, for the ridiculous sum of nine-
teen pounds odd shillings.
Household Words, March 26, 1857.
BIGOTRY.
A man must be excessively stupid, as well as
uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue
but on his own side. ADDISON.
Mr. T. sees religion not as a sphere, but as a
line; and it is the identical line in which he is
moving. He is like an African buffalo, sees
right forward, but nothing on the right hand or
the left. He would not perceive a legion of
angels or of devils at the distance of ten yards
on one side or the other.
JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
Any sect whose reasonings, interpretations,
and language I have been used to will, of
course, make all chime that way ; and make
another, and perhaps the genuine, meaning of
the author seem harsh, strange, and uncouth to
me. LOCKE.
One muffled up in the infallibility of his sect
will not enter .into debate with a person who
will question any of those things which to him
are sacred. LOCKE.
How ready zeal for interest and party is to
charge atheism on those who will not, without
examining, submit and blindly follow their non-
sense 1 LOCKE.
It is true that he professed himself a sup-
porter of toleration. Every sect clamours for
toleration when it is down. We have not the
smallest doubt that when Bonner was in the
Marshalsea he thought it a very hard thing that
a man should be locked up in a gaol for not
being able to understand the words " This is
my body" in the same way with the lords of the
council. T t would not be very wise to conclude
that a beggar is full of Christian charity be-
cause he assures you that God will reward you
if you give him a penny ; or that a soldier is
humane because he cries out lustily for quarter
when a bayonet is at his throat. The doctrine
which, from the very first origin of religious
dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects,
when condensed into a few words and stripped
of rhetorical disguise, is simply this : I am in
the right, and you are in the wrong. When you
are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me ; for
il is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am
the stronger, I shall persecute you ; for it 5 my
duty to persecute error.
LORD MACAUI.AY :
Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Kevo
lution, July, 1835.
Unhappy those who hunt for a party, and
scrape together out of every author all those
things only which favour their own tenets.
DR. 1. WATTS.
He that considers and inquires into the reason
of things is counted a foe to received doctrines.
DR. I. WATTS.
We ought to bring our minds free, unbiassed,
and teachable, to learn our religion from the
word of God. DR. I. WATTS.
BIOGRAPHY.
Our Grub-street biographers watch for the
death of a great man, like so many undertakers,
on purpose to make a penny of him.
ADDISON.
This manner of exposing the private concerns
of families, and sacrificing the secrets of the
dead to the curiosity of the living, is one of the
licentious practices, which might well deserve
the animadversions of our government.
ADDISON.
The lives of great men cannot be writ with
any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness
within a short time after their decease.
ADDISON.
Histories do rather set forth the pomp of busi
ness than the true and inward resorts thereof.
But Lives, if they be well written, propounding
to themselves a person to represent, in whom
actions both greater and smaller, public and
private, have a commixture, must of necessity
contain a more true, native, and lively repre-
sentation. LORD BACON:
Advancement of Learning.
I am only aware of one objection that has
been seriously urged against me as a writer,
and this I confess I have not at all attempted to
correct, that, forgetting the dignity of history,
my style is sometimes too familiar and collo-
quial. If I err here, it is on principle and by de-
sign. The felicity of my subject consists in the
great variety of topics which it embraces. My
endeavour has been to treat them all appropri-
ately. If in analyzing the philosophy of Bacon,
or expounding the judgments of Hardwicke, 01
drawing the character of C'arendon, I have for-
gotten the gravity and severity of diction suit-
able to the ideas to be expressed, I acknowledge
myself liable to the severest censure ; but in my
opinion the skilful biographer when he has to
narrate a ludicrous incident will rather try to
imitate the phrases of Mercutio than of Ancient
Pistol
" projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba."
BIOGRAPHY.
11
I cannot understand why, in recording a jest in
print, an author should be debarred from vising
the very language which he might with propri-
ety adopt if he were telling it in good society
by word of mouth. LORD CAMPBKLL :
Lord Chancellors, vi., Preface.
A true delineation of the smallest man is ca-
pable of interesting the greatest man.
CARLYLE.
Of all the species of literary composition per-
haps biography is the most delightful. The
attention concentrated on one individual gives
a unity to the mateiials of which it is composed,
which is wanting in general history. The train
of incidents through which it conducts the
reader suggests to his imagination a multitude
of analogies and comparisons; and while he is
following the course of events which mark the
life of him who is the subject of the narrative,
he is insensibly compelled to take a retrospect
of his own. In no other species of writing are
we permitted to scrutinize the character so ex-
actly, or to form so just and accurate an estimate
of the excellences and defects, the lights and
shades, the blemishes and beauties, of an indi-
vidual mind. ROBKRT HALL:
Preface to the Memoirs of Rev. J. Freeston.
He who desires to strengthen his virtue and
purify his principles will always prefer the solid
to the specious; will be more disposed to con-
template an example of the unostentatious piety
and goodness which all men may obtain than
of those extraordinary achievements to which
few can aspire : nor is it the mark of a superior,
but rather of a vulgar and superficial taste, to
consider nothing as great or excellent but that
which glitters with ti'.^c or is elevated by rank.
ROBERT HALL :
Preface to the Memoirs of Rev. J. Freeston.
This is a protest against a growing and intol-
erable evil to which every reader of these lines
will unhesitatingly put his name. Everybody is
subject to the nuisance. Some pretend to de-
spise it; some are good-natured, and don't care
about it ; others are so snobbish and vain that
they positively like it ; but all this is no argument
why you and I should submit to it, or refrain
from expressing our disgust and dissatisfaction.
I mean the pest of biography. What in the
world have I done to have my life written ? or
my neighbour the doctor? or Softlie, our curate?
We have never won battles, nor invented loga-
rithms, nor conquered Scinde, nor done any-
thing whatever out of the most ordinary course
of the most prosaic existences. Indeed, I may
say the two gentlemen I have mentioned are the
dullest fellows I ever knew : they are stupid at
breakfast, dinner, and lea; they never said a
witty thing in their lives; they never tried to
repeat a witty thing without entirely destroying
it. I have no doubt they think and say precisely
the same of me ; and yet we are all three in the
greatest danger of having our lives in print
overy day.
Household Words, July 25, 1857.
The business of the biographer is often to pass
slightly over those performances and incidents
which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the
thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the
minute details of daily life, where exterior ap-
pendages are cast aside, and men excel each
other only by prudence and virtue.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 60.
But biography has often been allotted to
writers who seem very little acquainted with the
nature of their task, or very negligent about the
performance. They rarely afford any other ac-
count than might be collected from public papers,
but imagine themselves writing a life when they
exhibit a chronological series of actions or pre-
ferments; and so little regard the manners or
behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge
may be gained of a man's real character by a
short conversation with one of his servants, than
from a formal and studied narrative, begun with
his pedigree and ended with his funeral.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 60.
The variety and splendour of the lives of
such men render it often difficult to distinguish
the portion of time which ought to be admitted
into history from that which should be preserved
for biography. Generally speaking, these two
parts are so distinct and unlike that they cannot
be confounded without much injury to both:
either when the biographer hides the portrait of
the individual by a crowded and confined pic-
ture of events, or when the historian allows un-
connected narratives of the lives of men to break
the thread of history. Perhaps nothing more
can be universally laid down than that the biog-
rapher never ought to introduce public events
except as far as they are absolutely necessary to
the illustration of character, and that the histo-
rian should rarely digress into biographical pai
ticulars except as far as they contribute to the
clearness of his narrative of political occur-
rences. SIR J. MACKINTOSH.
He [the biographer] is in no wise responsible
for the defects of his personages, sttll less is
their vindication obligatory upon him. This
conventional etiquette of extenuation mars the
utility of historical biography by concealing the
compensations so mercifully granted in love, and
the admonitions given by vengeance. Why sup-
press the lesson afforded by the depravity of " the
greatest, brightest, meanest of mankind ;" he
whose defilements teach us that the most tran-
scendent intellectuality is consistent with the
deepest turpitude ? The labours of the pane-
gyrists come after all to naught. You are trying
to fill a broken cistern. You may cut a hole in
the stuff, but you cannot wash out the stain.
SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE :
History of Normandy and England,
B. ii. p. 67.
The cabinets of the sick and the closets of
the dead have been ransacked to publish private
letters, and divulge to all mankind the most
secret sentiments of friendship. POPE
BLESSINGS. B OLDNESS.B O OKS.
I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal
of the memoirs of illustrious persons with in-
congruous features, and to sully the imaginative
purity of classical works with gross and trivial
recollections. WORDSWORTH.
BLESSINGS.
Even the best things, ill used, become evils,
and contrarily, the worst things, used well, prove
good. A good tongue used to deceit; a good
wit used to defend error; a strong arm to mur-
der; authority to oppress; a good profession to
dissemble; are all evil. Even God's own word
is the sword of the Spirit, which, if it kill not
our vices, kills our souls. Contrariwise (as
poisons are used to wholesome medicine), afflic-
tions and sins, by a good use, prove so gainful
as nothing more. Words are as they are taken,
and things are as they are used. There are
even cursed blessings. BISHOP HALL.
The blessings of fortune are the lowest : the
next are the bodily advantages of strength and
health : but the superlative blessings, in fine,
are those of the mind. L'EsTRANGE.
Health, beauty, vigour, riches, and all the
other things called goods, operate equally as
evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as
benefits to the just. PLATO.
Man has an unfortunate weaKness in the evil
hour after receiving an affront to draw together
all the moon-spots on the other person into an
outline of shadow, and a night-piece, and to
transform a single deed into a whole life ; and
this only in order that he may thoroughly relish
the pleasure of being angry. In love, he has
fortunately the opposite faculty of crowding
together all the light parts and rays of its object
into one focus by means of the burning glass of
imagination, and letting the sun burn without
its spots ; but he too generally does this only
when the beloved and often censured being is
already beyond the skies. In order, however,
that we should do this sooner and oftener, we
ought to act like Wincklemann, but only in
another \v:>.y. As he, namely, set aside a par-
ticular half-hour of each day for the purpose of
beholding and meditating on his too happy
existence in Rome, so we ought daily or weekly
tr dedicate and sanctify a solitary hour for the
purpose of summing up the virtues of our fami-
lies, our wives, our children, and our friends,
and viewing them in this beautiful crowded
assemblage of their good qualities. And, in-
deed, we should do so for this reason, that we
way not forgive and love too late, when the
beloved beings are already departed hence and
are beyond our reach. RICHTER.
BOLDNESS.
This is well to be weighed, that boldness is
ever blind ; for it seeth not dangers and incon-
veniences : therefore it is ill in council, good in
execution ; so that the right use of bold persons
is, that they never command in chief, but be
seconds, and under the direction of others : for
in counsel it is good to see dangers, and in ex-
ecution not to see them, except they be very
great. LORD BACON :
Essay XII. , Of Boldness.
Audacity doth almost bind and mate the
weaker sort of minds. LORD BACON.
A kind imagination makes a bold man have
vigour and enterprise in his air and motion: it
stamps value upon his face, and tells the people
he is to go for so much. J. COLLIER.
The bold and sufficient pursue their game
w.ith more passion, endeavour, and application,
and therefore often succeed.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
BOOKS.
The ordinary writers of morality prescribe to
their readers after the Galenic way; their medi-
cines are made up in large quantities. An
essay-writer must practise in the chemical
method, and give the virtue of a full draught in
a few drops. Were all books reduced thus to
their quintessence, many a bulky author would
make his appearance in a penny paper. There
would be scarce such a thing in nature as a folio;
the works of an age would be contained on a
few shelves ; not to mention millions of volumes
that would be utterly annihilated.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 124.
Books are the legacies that a great genius
leaves to mankind, which are delivered down
from generation to generation, as presents to the
posterity of those who are yet unborn. All
other arts of perpetuating our ideas continue
but a short time. Statues can last but a few
thousands of years, edifices fewer, and colours
still fewer than edifices. Michael Angelo, Fon-
tana, and Raphael will hereafter be what Phid
ias, Vitruvius, and Apelles are at present, the
names of great statuaries, architects, and paint-
ers whose works are lost. The several arts
are expressed in mouldering materials. Nature
sinks under them, and is not able to support the
ideas which are impressed upon it.
The circumstance which gives authors in
advantage above all these great masters is th.s,
that they can multiply their originals; or rather
can make copies of their works, to what number
they please, which shall be as valuable as the
originals themselves.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 166.
No man writes a book without meaning some-
thing, though he may not have the faculty of
writing consequentially, and expressing his
meaning. ADDISON : Whig Examiner.
Sour enthusiasts affect to stigmatize the finest
and most elegant authors, both ancient a id
modern, as dangerous to religion.
ADDISON.
BOOKS.
79
He often took a pleasure to appear ignorant,
that he might the heller turn to ridicule those
that valued themselves on their books.
ADDISON.
For friends, although your lordship be scant,
yet I hope you are not altogether destitute ; if
you be, do but look upon good Books : they are
true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissem-
ble : be you but true to yourself, applying that
which they teach unto the party grieved, and
you shall need no other comfort nor counsel.
To them, and to God's Holy Spirit directing
you in the reading them, I commend your lord-
ship. LORD HACON :
To Chief -Justice Coke.
Without books, God is silent, justice dormant,
natural science at a siand, philosophy lame,
letters dumb, and all things involved in Cim-
merian darkness. BARTHOLIN.
There are books extant which they must needs
allow of as proper evidence ; even the mighty
volumes of visible nature, and the everlasting
tables of right reason. BENTLEY.
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the
nature of books recommended by public au-
thority. So recommended, they soon form the
character of the age. Uncertain indeed is the
efficacy, limited indeed is the extent, of a vir-
tuous institution. But if education takes in
vice as any part of its system, there is no doubt
but that it will operate with abundant energy,
and to an extent indefinite. BURKE :
Letter to a Member of the Nat. Assembly, 1791.
Of all the thing., which n.an can do or make
liere below, by far the most momentous, won-
derful, and worthy are the things we call books.
CARLYLE.
Readers are not aware of the fact, but a fact
it is of daily increasing magnitude, and already
of terrible importance to readers, that their first
grand necessity in reading is to be vigilantly,
conscientiously select ; and to know everywhere
that books, like human souls, are actually
divided into vliai we may call " sheep and
goats," the latter put inexorably on the left
hand of the Judge ; and tending, every goat of
them, at all moments, whither we know, and
much to be avoided, and, if possible, ignored,
by all sane creatures ! CARLYLE:
To S. Austin Allibone, \%th July, 1859.
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy in-
tercourse with superior minds, and these invalu-
able means of communication are in the reach
of all. In the best books great men talk to us,
give us their most precious thoughts, and pour
their souls in^o ours. God be thanked for
books ! they are the voices of the distant and
the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life
of past ages. Books are the true levellers.
They give tc all, who will faithfully use them,
the society, the spiritual presence, of the best
and greatest of our race. No matter how poor
I am, no matter though the prosperous of my
own time will not enter my obscure dwelling,
if the Sacred Writers will enter and take up
their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross
my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and
Sliakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagina-
tion and the workings of the human heart, and
Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom,
I shall not pine for want of intellectual com-
panionship, and I may become a cultivated
man, though excluded from what is called the
best society in the place where I live.
DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self- Culture.
Nothing can supply the place of books. They
are cheering or soothing companions in solitude,
illness, affliction. The wealth of both conti-
nents would not compensate for the good they
impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some
good books under his roof, and obtain access
for himself and family to some social library.
Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this.
DR. W. E. CHANNING: Self -Culture.
Books are the food of youth, the delight of
old age ; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge
and comfort of adversity ; a delight at home,
and no hindrance abroad; companions by night,
in travelling, in the country. ClCERO.
In former times a popular work meant one
that adapted the results of studious meditation,
or scientific research, to the capacity of the peo-
ple : presenting in the concrete by instances and
examples what had been ascertained in the
Abstract and by the discovery of the law. Now,
on the other hand, that is a popular work which
gives back to the people their own errors and
prejudices, and flatters the many by creating
them, under the title of the public, into a su-
preme and unappealable tribunal of intellectual
excellence. COLERIDGE.
Books are a guide in youth, and an enter-
tainment for age. They support us under soli-
tude, and keep us from becoming a burden to
ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness
of men and things, compose our cares and our
passions, and lay our disappointments asleep.
When we are weary of the living we may repair
to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness,
pride, or design in their conversation.
JEREMY COLLIER.
With books, as with companions, it is of more
consequence to know which to avoid than which
to choose : for good books are as scarce as good
companions, and, in both instances, all that we
can learn from bad ones is, that so much time
has been worse than thrown away. That writer
does the most who gives his reader the most
knowledge and takes from him the least time.
That short period of a short existence which is
rationally employed is that which alone de-
serves the name of life ; and that portion of
our life is most rationally employed which is
occupied in enlarging our stock of truth and of
wisdom. COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
Nexl to acquiring good friends, the best ac-
quisition is that of good books.
C. C. COLTON.
8o
BOOKS.
If a book really wants the patronage of a
great name, it is a bad book ; and if it be a good
book, it wants it not. Swift dedicated a volume
to Prince Posterity, and there was a manliness
in the act. Posterity will prove a patron of the
soundest judgment, as unwilling to give, as un-
willing to receive, adulation. But posterity is
not a very accessible personage; he knows the
high value of that which he gives, he therefore
is extremely particular as to what he receives.
Very few of the presents that are directed to
him reach their destination. Some are too
light, others too heavy; since it is as difficult to
throw a straw any distance as a ton.
COLTON: Lacon, Preface.
The book of Life is the tabernacle wherein
the treasure of wisdom is to be found. The
truth of voice perishes with the sound; truth
Intent in the mind is hidden wisdom and invisi-
ble treasure; but the truth which illuminates
books desires to manifest itself to every discip-
linable sense. Let us consider how great a
commodity of doctrine exists in books, how
easily, how secretly, how safely, they expose the
nakedness of human ignorance without putting
it to shame. These are the masters that instruct
us without rods and ferules, without hard words
and anger, without clothes or money. If you
approach them, they are not asleep ; if, inves-
tigating, you interrogate them, they conceal
nothing; if you mistake them, they never
grumble ; if you are ignorant,' they cannot laugh
at you. RICHARD DE BURY :
Philobiblon, 1344.
Under our present enormous accumulation of
books, I do affirm that a most miserable distrac-
tion of choice must be very generally incident
to the times ; that the symptoms of it are in fact
very prevalent, and that one of the chief symp-
toms is an enormous " gluttonism" for books.
DE QUINCEY.
Books are loved by some merely as elegant
combinations of thought; by others as a means
of exercising the intellect. By some they are
considered as the engines by which to propagate
opinions ; and by others they are only deemed
worthy of serious regard when they constitute
repositories of matters of fact. But perhaps the
most important use of literature has been pointed
out by those who consider it as a record of the
respective modes of moral and intellectual ex-
istence that have prevailed in successive ages,
and who value literary performances in propor-
tion as they preserve a memorial of the spirit
which was at work in real life during the times
when they were written. Considered in this
point of view, books can no longer be slighted
as fanciful tissues of thought, proceeding from
the solitary brains of insulated poets or meta-
physicians. They are the shadows of what has
R>rmerly occupied the minds of mankind, and
of what once determined the tenor of exist-
ence. The narrator who details political events
does no more than indicate a few of the exter-
nal effects, or casual concomitants, of what was
stirring during the times of which he professes
to be the historian. As the generations change
on the face of the globe, different eneigies are
evolved with new strength, or sink into torpor;
faculties are brightened into perfection, or lose
themselves in gradual blindness and oblivion.
No age concentrates within itself all advantages.
The knowledge of what has been is necessary,
in addition to the knowledge of the present, to
enable us to conceive the full extent of human
powers and capacities ; or, to speak more cor-
rectly, this knowledge is necessary to enable us
to become acquainted with the varieties of talent
and energy with which beings of the same gen-
eral nature with ourselves have, in past times,
been endowed. LORD DUDLEY.
In literature I am fond of confining myself
to the best company, which consists chiefly of
my old acquaintance with whom I am desirous
of becoming more intimate ; and I suspect that
nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if
not more agreeable, to read an old book over
again, than to read a new one for the first time.
If I hear of a new poem, for instance, I ask
myself whether it is superior to Homer, or
Shakspeare, or Virgil ; and, in the next place,
whether I have all these authors completely at
my fingers' ends. And when both these ques-
tions have been answered in the negative, I
infer that it is better (and to me it is certainly
pleasanter) to give such time as I have to be-
stow on the reading of poetry to Homer, Shak-
speare and Co. ; and so of other things. Is it
not better to try and adorn one's mind by the
constant study and contemplation of the great
models, than merely to know of one's own
knowledge that such a book is not worth read-
ing ? Some new books it is necessary to read,
part for the information they contain, and others
in order to acquaint one's self with the state of
literature in the age in which one lives : but I
would rather read too few than too many.
LORD DUDLEY.
If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe
were laid down at my feet in exchange for my
books and my love of reading, I would spurn
them all. FENELON.
In books one takes up occasionally one finds
a consolation for the impossibility of reading
many books, by seeing how many might have
been spared, how little that is new or striking
in the great departments of religion, morals, and
sentiment. JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
How large a portion of the material that
books are made of, is destitute of any peculiar
distinction ! "It has," as Pope said of women,
just " no character at all." An accumulation
of sentences and pages of vulgar truisms and
candle-light sense, which any one was compe-
tent^to write, and which no one is interested in
reading, or cares to remember, or could remem-
ber if he cared. JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
Nothing is more delightful than to lie under
a tree, in the summer, with a book, except to litf
under a tree, in the summer, without a book.
C. J. Fox.
BOOKS.
81
Books make up no small part of human Hap-
niness. FREDERICK THE GREAT, in youth.
My latest passion will be for literature.
FREDERICK THE GREAT, in old age.
To divert, at any time, a troublesome fancy,
run to thy L'.ooks. They presently fix thee to
them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts.
They always receive thee with the same kind-
ness. THOMAS FULLER.
It is a vanity to persuade the world one
hath much learning by getting a great library.
As soon shall I believe every one is valiant
that hath a well-furnished armoury. . . . Some
books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely,
first voluminous books, the task of a man's life
to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books,
only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly,
such as are merely pieces of formality, so that
if you look on them you look through them,
and he that peeps through the casement of the
index sees as much as if he were in the house.
But the laziness of those cannot be excused
who perfunctorily pass over authors of con-
sequence, and only trade in their tables and
contents. These, like city-cheates, having got-
ten the names of all country gentlemen, make
silly people believe they have long lived in
those places where they never were, and flour-
ish with skill in those authors they never seri-
ously studied. THOMAS FULLER :
The Holy and the Profane State.
A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of
my life. I would not exchange it for the riches
of the Indies. GlBBON.
Among men long conversant with books we
too frequently find those misplaced virtues of
which 1 have now been complaining. We find
the studious animated with a strong passion for
the great virtues, as they are mistakingly called,
and utterly forgetful of the ordinary ones. The
declamations of philosophy are generally rather
exhausted on those supererogatory duties than
on such as are indispensably necessary. A man,
therefore, who has taken his ideas of mankind
from study alone, generally comes into the world
with a heart melting at every fictitious distress.
Thus he is induced, by misplaced liberality, to
put himself into the indigent circumstances of
the person he relieves.
GOLDSMITH : Essays, No. VI.
In proportion as society refines, new books
must ever become more necessary. Savage rus-
ticity is reclaimed by oral admonition alone ;
but the elegant excesses of refinement are best
corrected by the still voice of a studious in-
quiry. In a polite age almost every person be-
comes a reader, and receives more instruction
from the press than the pulpit. The preaching
Bonse may instruct the illiterate peasant, but
nothing less than the insinuating address of a
fine writer can win its way to a heart already
relaxed in all the effeminacy of refinement.
Books are necessary to correct the vices of the
polite, but those vices are ever changing, and
6
the antidote should be changed accordingly,
should still be new. Instead, therefore, >f
thinking the number of new publications here,
too great, I could wish it still greater, as they
are the most useful instruments of reformation.
GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter LXXV.
Books, while they teach us to respect the
interest of others, often make us unmindful of
our own ; while they instruct the youthful reader
to grasp at social happiness, he grows miserable
in detail ; and, attentive to universal harmony,
often forgets that he himself has a part to sus-
tain in the concert. I dislike, therefore, the
philosopher who describes the inconveniences
of life in such pleasing colours that the pupil
grows enamoured of distress, longs to try the
charms of poverty, meets it without dread, nor
fears its inconveniences till he severely feels
them.
A youth who has thus spent his life among
books, new to the world, and unacquainted wiih
man but by philosophic information, may be
considered as a being whose mind is filled with
the vulgar errors of the wise : utterly unqualified
for a journey through life, yet confident of his
own skill in the direction, he sets out with con-
fidence, blunders on with vanity, and finds him-
self at last undone. GOLDSMITH :
Essays, No. XXVII., and Citizen of the
World, Letter LXVII.
In England, where there are as many new
books published as in all the rest of Europe put
together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns
among the people ; they have been often known
to act like fools, they are generally found tc
think like men. ... An author may be con-
sidered as a merciful substitute to the legisla-
ture. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by
preventing them. GOLDSMITH.
What a world of thought is here packed up
together ! I know not whether this sight doth
more dismay or comfort me. It dismays me to
think that here is so much that I cannot know ;
it comforts me to think that this variety affords
so much assistance to know what I should. . . .
What a happiness is it that, without the aid of
necromancy, I can here call up any of the
ancient worthies of learning, whether human or
divine, and confer with them upon all my
doubts; that I can at pleasure summon whole
synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors
from all the coasts of the earth, to give their
well-studied judgments in all doubtful points
which I propose. Nor can I cast my eye casu-
ally upon any of these silent masters but I mas*
learn somewhat. It is a wantonness to complain
of choice. No law binds us to read all ; but the
more we can take in and digest, the greater will
be our improvement.
Blessed be God who hath set up so many
clear lamps in his church : none but the wilfully
blind can plead darkness. And blessed be the
memory of those, his faithful servants, who have
left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in 'hesc
82
BOOKS.
precious papers; and have willingly wasted
themselves into these enduring monuments to
give light to others.
BISHOP JOSEPH HALL :
Meditation on the Sight of a Large Library.
The poor man who has gained a taste for good
books will in all likelihood become thoughtful ;
and when you have given the poor a habit of
thinking you have conferred on them a much
greater favour than by the gift of a large sum
of money, since you have put them in possession
t>f the principle of all legitimate prosperity.
ROBERT HALL:
, Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower Classes.
Were I to pray for a taste which should stand
me in stead under every variety of circumstances,
and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness
to me during life, and a shield against its ills,
however things might go amiss, and the world
frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading.
Give a man this taste, and the means of gratify-
ing it, and you can hardly fail of making him a
happy man ; unless, indeed, you put into his
hands a most perverse selection of Books. You
place him in contact with the best society in
every period of history, with the wisest, the
wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest
characters who have adorned humanity. You
make him a denizen of all nations, a contempo-
rary of all ages. The world has been created
for him ! SIR J. F. W. HERSCIIEL :
Address aJ the Opening of the Eton
Library, 1833.
We often make a great blunder when, snatch-
ing up an old fairy-tale book, hap-hazard, we
fancy we can revive those pleasant days of our
childhood, in which we thought that the absence
of a supernatural godmother was a serious de-
fect in modern christenings ; that a gentleman's
second wife was sure to persecute the progeny
of the first, who were (or was) always pretty,
and equally sure to bring into the family an ugly
brat the result of a former marriage on her
own part whom she spoiled and petted, less
from motives of affection than from a desire to
spite all the rest; that where there were three or
seven children in a household, the youngest was
invariably the shrewdest of the lot ; and that no
great and glorious end could be obtained with-
out overthrowing three successive obstacles, each
more formidable than the obstacle preceding.
Hozisehold Words.
It is books that teach us to refine our pleas-
ures when young, and which, having so taught
us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction
when old. LEIGH HUNT.
Books are faithful repositories, which may be
awhile neglected or forgotten, but when they are
opened again will again impart their instruction.
Memory once interrupted is not to be recalled;
written learning is a fixed luminary, which after
the cloud that had hidden it has passed away,
is again bright in its proper station. Tradition
is but a meteor, which if it once falls cannot
be rekindled. DR. S. JOHNSON.
The foundation of knowledge must be laid
by reading. General principles must be had
from books; which, however, must be brought
to the test of real life. In conversation you
never get a system. What is said upon a sub-
ject is to be gathered from a hundred people.
The parts which a man gets thus are at such a
distance from each other that he never attains to
a full view. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Books that you may carry to the fite and hold
readily in your hand are the most useful, aftei
all. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Except a living man, there is nothing more
wonderful than a book ! a message to us from
the dead, from human souls whom we never
saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles
away ; and yet these, in those little sheets of
paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach
us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as
brothers. ... I say we ought to reverence books,
to look at them as useful and mighty things. If
they are good and true, whether they are about
religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine,
they are the message of Christ, the maker of all
things, the teacher of all truth.
REV. C. KINGSLEY.
To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the
desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes
after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to
be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscrimi-
nately. I would not dress a set of Magazines,
for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or
half-binding (with Russia backs ever), is our
costume. A Shakspeare or a Milton (unless the
first editions) it were mere foppery to trick out
in gay apparel. The possession of them confers
no distinction. The exterior of them (the
things themselves being so common), strange to
say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense
of property in the owner. . . . In some respects,
the better a book is, the less it demands from
binding. . . . But where a book is at once both
good and rare, where the individual is almost
the species, and, when that perishes,
We know not where is that Promethean torch
That can its life relumine
. . . no casket is rich enough, no casing suf-
ficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such
a jewel. LAMB:
Detached Thotights on Books and Reading.
I can read anything which I call a book.
There are things in that shape which I cannot
allow for such. In this catalogue of books which
are no books biblia a-biblia I reckon Court
Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught
Boards bound and lettered on the back, Scien-
tific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : the
works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie,
Soame Jenyns, and generally all those volumes
which " no gentleman's library should be with-
out :" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that
learned J'ew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy,
With these exceptions, 1 can read almost any-
BOOKS.
thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic,
so unexcluding. LAMB :
Detached Thoi4ghts on Books and Reading.
Their being forced to their books in an age
at enmity with all restraint has been the reason
why many have hated books. LOCKE.
He that will inquire out the best books in
every science, and inform himself of the most
material authors of the several acts of philos-
ophy and religion, will not find it an infinite
work to acquaint himself with the sentiments
of mankind concerning the most weighty and
comprehensive subjects. LOCKE.
Every great book is an action, and every great
action is a book. LUTHER.
There is no end of books, and yet we seem
to need more every day : there was such a
darkness brought in by the Fall, as will not
thoroughly be dispelled till we come to Heaven,
where the sun shineth without either cloud or
night : for the present all should contribute their
help according to the rate and measure of their
abilities: some can only hold up a candle,
others a torch, but all are useful. The press is
an excellent means to scatter knowledge, were
it not so often abused : all complain there is
enough written, and think that now there should
be a stop ; indeed it were well if in this scrib-
bling age there were some restraint: useless
pamphlets are grown almost as great a mischief
as the erroneous and profane. Yet 'tis not good
to shut the door upon industry and diligence:
there is yet room left to discover more (above
all that hath been said) of the wisdom of God,
and the riches of His grace in the Gospel : yea,
more of the stratagems of Satan, and the deceit-
fulness of man's heart : means need to be in-
creased every day to weaken sin, and strengthen
trust, and quicken us to holiness : fundamentals
are the same in all ages, but the constant neces-
sities of the Church and private Christians will
continually enforce a further explication : as the
arts and sleights of besieging and battering in-
crease, so doth skill in fortification : if we have
no other benefit by the multitude of books that
are written, we have this benefit, an opportunity
to observe the various workings of the same
spirit about the same truths ; and, indeed, the
speculation is neither idle nor unfruitful.
M ANTON.
For books are not absolutely dead things, but
do contain a potency of life in them, to be as
active as that soul whose progeny they are ; nay,
they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy
and extraction of that living intellect that bred
them. I know they are as lively, and as vigor-
ously productive, as those fabulous dragons'
teeth; and, being sown up and down, may
chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on
the other hand, unless wariness be used, as
good almost kill a man as kill a good book :
who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,
God's image ; but he who destroys a good book
kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as
it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden
to the earth; but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and
treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
M I LTON : A reopagitica.
In Athens, where books and wits were ever
busier than in any other part of Greece, 1 find
but only two sorts of writing which the magis-
trate cared to take notice of; those either blas-
phemous and atheistical, or libellous.
MILTON.
I deny not but that it is of greatest concern-
ment in the church and commonwealth to have
a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as
well as men; and thereafter to confine, im-
prison, and do sharpest justice on them as male-
factors. MILTON.
Books have brought some men to knowledge,
and some to madness. As fulness sometimes
hurteth the stomach more than hunger, so fareth
it with wits ; and, as of meats, so, likewise, of
books, the use ought to be limited according to
the quality of him that useth them.
PETRARCH: Twynis trans., 1579, 62.
I have Friends whose society is extremely
agreeable to me : they are of all ages, and of
every country. They have distinguished them-
selves both in the cabinet and in the field, and
obtained high honours for their knowledge of
the sciences. It is easy to gain access to them ;
for they are always at my service, and I admit
them to my company, and dismiss them from it,
whenever I please. They are never trouble-
some, but immediately answer every question I
ask them. Some relate to me the events of past
ages, while others reveal to me the secrets of
nature. Some teach me how to live, and others
how to die. Some, by their vivacity, drive
away my cares and exhilarate my spirits, while
others give fortitude to my mind, and teach me
the important lesson how to restrain my desires
and depend wholly on myself. They open to
me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts
and sciences, and upon their information I safely
rely in all emergencies. In return for all these
services they only ask me to accommodate them
with a convenient chamber in some corner of
my humble habitation, where they may repose
in peace : for these friends are more delighted
by the tranquillity of retirement than with the
tumults of society.
PETRARCH: Disraeli's Curiosities of Lit*
We ought to regard books as we do sweet-
meats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but
chiefly to respect the wholesomest ; not forbid-
ding either, but approving the latter most.
PLUTARCH.
To buy books only because they were pub-
lished by an eminent printer, is much as if a
man should buy clothes that did not fit him,
only because made by some famous tailor.
POPE.
BOOKS. BORES.
Employ your time in improving yourselves
by other men's i locuments ; so shall you come
easily by what others have laboured hard for.
Prefer knowledge to wealth ; for the one is
transitory, the other perpetual.
SOCRATES.
For he had no catechism but the creation,
needed no study but reflection, and read no
hook but the volume of the world.
SOUTH.
It would please you to see such a display of
literary wealth which is at once the pride of my
eye, and the joy of my heart, and the food of
my mind ; indeed, more than metaphorically
meat, drink, and clothing, to me and mine. I
believe that no one in my station was ever so
rich before, and I am sure that no one in my
station had ever a more thorough enjoyment of
riches of any kind, or in any way. It is more
delightful for me to live with books than with
men, even with all the relish which I have for
such society as is worth having.
SOUTHEY : Life, v. 333.
Books give the same turn to our thoughts
that company does to our conversation, without
loading our memories, or making us even sen-
sible of the change. SWIFT.
The collectors only consider, the greater fame
a writer is in possession of, the more trash he
may bear to have tacked to him. SWIFT.
It is the editor's interest to insert what the
author's judgment had rejected; and care is
taken to intersperse these additions, so that
scarce any book can be bought without pur-
chasing something unworthy of the author.
SWIFT.
The design is to avoid the imputation of ped-
antry, to show that they understand men and
manners, and have not been poring upon old
unfashionable books. SWIFT.
Charles Lamb, tired of lending his books,
threatened to chain Wordsworth's poems to his
shelves, adding, " For of those who borrow,
some read slow ; some mean to read, but don't
read ; and some neither read nor mean to read,
but borrow, to leave you an opinion of their
sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing
friends the justice to say that there is nothing
of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in
them. When they borrow my money they never
fail to make use of it." TALFOURD.
'Tis obvious what rapport there is between
the conceptions and languages in every country,
and how great a difference this must make in
the excellence of books. SIR W. TEMPLE.
Such printers are not to be defrauded of their
due commendation who employ their endeav-
our to restore the fruitful works of ancient
writers. TYNDALE.
Here is the best solitary company in the
world, and in this particular chiefly excelling
any other, that in my study I am sure to con-
verse with none but wise men ; but abroad it is
impossible for me to avoid the society of fools.
What an advantage have I, by this good fellow-
ship, that, besides the help which I receive from
hence in reference to my life after this life, I
can enjoy the life of so many ages before I
lived ! That I can be acquainted with the pas-
sages of three or four thousand years ago, as if
they were the weekly occurrences. Here, with-
out travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the
ablest spirits of those times, ihe learnedest phi-
losophers, the greatest generals, and make them
serviceable to me. I can make bold with the
best jewels they have in their treasury with the
same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of
the Egyptians, and, without suspicion of felony,
make use of them as mine own.
SIR WILLIAM WALLER :
Meditations upon the Contentment I have
in my Books and Study.
Our fathers had a just value for regularity
and system : then folios and quartos were the
fashionable size, as volumes in octavo are now.
DR. I. WATTS.
There is so much virtue in eight volumes of
Spectators, such a reverence of things sacred, so
many valuable remarks for our conduct in life,
that they are not improper to lie in parlours or
summer-houses, to entertain our thoughts in any
moments of leisure. DR. I. WATTS.
BORES.
I have been tired with accounts from sensible
men, furnished with matters of fact which have
happened within their own knowledge.
ADDISON.
Benjamin Busy, of London, merchant, was
indicted by Jasper Tattle, Esquire, for having
pulled out his watch, and looked upon it
thrice, while the said Esquire Tattle was giving
him an account of the funeral of the said Esquire
Tattle's first wife. The prisoner alleged in his
defence, that he was going to buy stocks at the
time when he met the prosecutor; and that,
during the story of the prosecutor, the said
stocks rose above two per cent., to the great
detriment of the prisoner. The prisoner farther
brought several witnesses to prove that the said
Jasper Tattle, Esquire, was a most notorious
story-teller; that, before he met the prisoner, he
had hindered one of the prisoner's acquaint-
ance from the pursuit of his lawful business,
with "the account of his second marriage ; and
that he had detained another by the button of
his coat that very morning until he had heard
several witty sayings and contrivances of the
prosecutor's eldest son, who was a boy of about
five years of age.
AUDISON and STEELE: Tatler, No. 265.
BORES. BRAIN.
Never hold any one by the button or the
hand in order to he heard out ; for if people
are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold
your tongue than them.
LORD CHESTERFIELD.
If we engage into a large acquaintance and
various familiarities, we set open our gates to
the invaders of most of our time; we expose
our life to a quotidian ague of frigid imperti-
nencies which would make a wise man tremble
to think of. COWLEY.
He is somewhat arrogant at his first entrance,
and too inquisitive through the whole ; yet these
imperfections hinder not our compassion.
DRYDEN.
These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by
the name of solid men. DRYDEN.
I have no objection whatever to being a bore.
My experience of the world has shown me that,
upon the whole, a bore gets on much better in
it, and is much more respected and permanently
popular, than what is called a clever man. A
few restless people, with an un-English appetite
for perpetual variety, have combined to set up
the bore as a species of bugbear to frighten
themselves, and have rashly imagined that the
large majority of their fellow-creatures could
see clearly enough to look at the formidable
creature with their eyes. Never did any small
minority make any greater mistake as to the real
extent of its influence ! English society has a
placid enjoyment in being bored. If any man
tells me that this is a paradox, I, in return, defy
him to account on any other theory for three-
fourths of the so-called recreations which are
accepted as at once useful and amusing by the
British nation. Household Words.
I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A
carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer's noon,
will fret me into more than midsummer mad-
ness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are
nothing to the measured malice of music.
LAMB.
It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a
studious man to have his thoughts disordered by
a tedious visit. L' ESTRANGE.
It is with some so hard a thing to employ
their time, that it is a great good fortune when
they have a friend indisposed, that they may be
punctual in perplexing him, when he is recov-
ered enough to be in that state which cannot be
called sickness or health ; when he is too well
to deny company, and too ill to receive them.
It is no uncommon case, if a man is of any figure
or power in the world, to be congratulated into
a relapse. SIR R. STEELE, Toiler, No. 89.
There is a sort of littleness in the minds of
men of strong sense, which makes them much
more insufferable than mere fools, and has the
farther inconvenience of being attended by an
endless loquacity ; for which reason it would
be a very proper work if some well-wisher to
human society would consider the terms upon
which people meet in public places, in order to
prevent the unseasonable declamations which
we meet there. I remember, in my youth, it
was the humour at the university, when a fellow
pretended to be more eloquent than ordinary,
and had formed to himself a plot to gain all our
admiration, or triumph over us with an argu-
ment, to either of which he had no manner of
call ; I say, in either of these cases, it was the
humour to shut one eye. This whimsical way
of taking notice to him of his absurdity ha
prevented many a man from being a coxcomb.
If amongst us, on such an occasion, each man
offered a voluntary rhetorician some snuff, it
would probably produce the same effect.
S'R R. STEELE: Taller, No. 197.
It is an unreasonable thing some men expect
of their acquaintance. They are ever complain-
ing that they are out of order, or displeased, or
they know not how, and are so far from letting
that be a reason for retiring to their own homes,
that they make it their argument for coming
into company. What has anybody to do with
accounts of a man's being indisposed but his
physician ? If a man laments in company,
where the rest are in humour to enjoy them-
selves, he should not take it ill if a servant is
ordered to present him with a porringer of cau-
dle or posset-drink, by way of admonition that
he go home to bed.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 143.
BRAIN.
In short, to be a Bruce, Bonaparte, Luther,
Knox, Demosthenes, Shakspeare, Milton, or
Cromwell, a large brain is indispensably requi-
site. But to display skill, enterprise, and fidelity
in the various professions of civil life to culti-
vate with success the less arduous branches of
philosophy to excel in acuteness, taste, and
felicity of expression to acquire extensive eru-
dition and refined manners a brain of a mod-
erate size is perhaps more suitable than one that
is very large; for wherever the energy is intense
it is rare that delicacy, refinement, and taste are
present in an equal degree. Individuals pos-
sessing moderate-sized brains easily find their
proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their
energy. In ordinary circumstances they distin-
guish themselves, but they sink when difficulties
accumulate around them. Persons with large
brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain
their appropriate place; common occurrences do
not rouse or call them forth, and, while un-
known, they are not trusted with great under-
takings. Often, therefore, such men pine and
die in obscurity. When, however, they attain
their proper element, they are conscious of
greatness, and glory in the expansion of their
powers. Their mental energies rise in propor-
tion to the obstacles to be surmounted, and blaze
forth in all the magnificence of self-sustaining
86
BUNYAN.
energetic genius, on occasions when feebler
minds would sink in despair.
GEORGE COMBE: System of Phrenology.
BUNYAN.
The style of Bunyan is delightful to every
reader, and invaluable as a study to every per-
son who wishes to obtain a wide command over
the English language. The vocabulary is the
vocabulary of the common people. There is
not an expression, if we except a few technical
terms of theology, which would puzzle the
rudest peasant. We have observed several pages
which do not contain a single word of more than
two syllables. Yet no writer has said more ex-
actly what he meant to say. For magnificence,
for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle
disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the
orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the
dialect of the workingmen, was perfectly suf-
ficient. There is no book in our literature on
which we would so readily stake the fame of
the old unpolluted English language, no book
which shows so well how rich that language is
jn its own proper wealth, and how little it has
been improved by all that it has borrowed.
Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he
dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for
fear of moving a sneer. To our refined fore-
fathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay
on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buck-
ingham's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be com-
ipositions infinitely superior to the allegory of
the preaching tinker. We live in better times ;
andvwe are not afraid to say, that, though there
were many clever men in England during the
latter half of the seventeenth century, there
were only two minds which possessed the im-
aginative faculty in a very eminent degree.
One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost,
the other the Pilgrim's Progress.
LORD MACAULAY :
Southey 's Edition of the Pilgrim's
Progress, Dec. 1830.
The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly is not a
perfect allegory. The types are often inconsist-
ent with each other; and sometimes the alle-
gorical disguise is altogether thrown off. The
river, for example, is emblematic of death ; and
we are told that every human being must pass
through the river. But Faithful does not pa^s
through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but
in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to
Christian about Esau's birthright and about his
own convictions of sin as Bunyan might have
talked with one of his own congregation. The
damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Chris-
tiana's boys as any good ladies might catechise
any boys at a Sunday-school. But we do not
believe that any man, whatever might be his
genius, and whatever his good luck, could long
continue a figurative history without falling into
many inconsistencies. We are sure that incon-
sistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into
which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the
shortest and most elaborate allegories of the
Spectator and the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub
and the History of John Bull swarm with simi
lar errors, if the name of error can be properly
applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not
easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But we
believe that no human ingenuity could produce
such a centipede as a long allegory in which the
correspondence between the outward sign and
the thing signified should be exactly preserved.
Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet
achieved the adventure. The best thing, on the
whole, that an allegorist can do, is to present to
his readers a succession of analogies, each of
which may separately be striking and happy,
without looking very nicely to see whether they
harmonize with each other. This Bunyan has
done; and, though a minute scrutiny may detect
inconsistencies in every page of his -Tale, the
general effect which the Tale produces on all
persons, learned and unlearned, proves that he
has done well. LORD MACAULAY :
Southey's Edition of the Pilgrim" 1 *
Progress, Dec. 1830.
CALAMITY. CA USA TION.
CALAMITY.
Another ill accident is drought, and the spin-
dling of the corn ; insomuch as the word ca-
lamity was first derived from calamus [stalk]
when the corn could not get out of the stalk.
LORD BACON.
For secret calumny, or the arrow flying in the
dark, there is no public punishment left but
rhat a good writer inflicts. POPE.
Of some calamity we can have no relief but
from God alone ; and what would men do in
such a case, if it were not for God ?
TlLLOTSON.
Much more should the consideration of this
pattern arm us with patience against ordinary
calamities; especially if we consider His exam-
ple with this advantage, that though His suffer-
ings were wholly undeserved, and not for Him-
self but for us, yet He bore them patiently.
TlLLOTSON.
CALLING.*
Of the professions it may be said, that soldiers
are becoming too popular, parsons too lazy,
physicians too mercenary, and lawyers too pow-
erful. C. C. COLTON.
As the calling dignifies the man, so the man
much more advances his calling. SOUTH.
How important is the truth which we express
in the naming of our work in this world our
vocation, or, which is the same finding utter-
ance in homelier Anglo-Saxon, our calling!
R. C. TRENCH.
CALUMNY.
Calumnies often refuted are the posfulafums
of scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon
first principles. ADDISON.
Calumny robs the public of all that benefit
that it may justly claim from the worth and vir-
tue of particular persons, by rendering their
virtue utterly insignificant. SOUTH.
If the calumniator bespatters and belies me,
I will endeavour to convince him by my life and
manners, but not by being like himself.
SOUTH.
CANDOUR.
Always, when thou changest thy opinion or
course, . . . profess it plainly, . . . and do not
think to steal it. LORD BACON.
There is but one way I know of conversing
safely with all men; that is, not by concealing
what we say or do, but by saying or doing
nothing that deserves to be concealed.
POPE.
A man should never be ashamed to own he
has been in the wrong, which is but saying in
ther words that he is wiser to-day than he was
yesterday.
POPE : Thoughts on Variotit Subjects.
CANT.
That cant and hypocrisy which had taken
possession of the people's minds in the times of
the great rebellion. ADDISON.
The superabundance of phrases appropriated
by some pious authors to the subject of religion,
and never applied to any other purpose, has not
only the effect of disgusting persons of taste,
but of obscuring religion itself. As they are
seldom defined, and never exchanged for equiv
alent words, they pass current without being
understood. They are not the vehicle, they are
the substitute, of thought.
ROBERT HALL:
Review of Foster's Essays.
There is such a thing as a peculiar word or
phrase cleaving, as it were, to the memory of the
writer or sneaker, and presenting itself to his
utterance at every turn. When we observe this,
we call it a cant word or a cant phrase
PALEY.
The affectation of some late authors to intra
duce and multiply cant words is the most ruiu
ous corruption in any language. SWIFT.
CAUSATION.
That great chain of causes, which, linking
one to another, even to the throne of God him-
self, can never be unravelled by any industry
of ours. BURKE.
It becomes extremely hard to disentangle our
idea of the cause from the effect by which we
know it. " BURKE.
We know the effects of many things, but the
causes of few; experience, therefore, is a surer
guide than imagination, and enquiry than con-
jecture. But those physical difficulties which
you cannot account for, be very slow to arraign,
for he that would be wiser than nature would be
wiser than God. COLTON : Lacon.
I sometimes use the word cau?e to signify
any antecedent vvith which a consequent event
is so connected that it truly belongs to the reason
why the proposition which affirms that event is
true, whether it has any positive influence or
not. JONATHAN EDWARDS.
Every effect doth after a sort contain, at least-
wise resemble, the cause from which it pro-
ceedeth. HOOKER
S8
CA USA TION.CA UTION.CA VALIERS.
The wise and learned amongst the very hea-
thens themselves have all acknowledged some
first cause whereupon originally the being of all
things dependeth ; neither have they otherwise
spoken of that cause than as an agent, which
knowing what and why it worketh, observeth in
working a most exact order or law.
HOOKER.
Cause is a substance exerting its power into
act, to make one thing begin to be. LOCKE.
The cleanness and purity of one's mind is
never belter proved than in discovering its own
faults at first view. POPE.
The general idea of cause is that without
which another thing, called the effect, cannot
be. The final cause is that for the sake of which
anything is done. LORD MONBODDO.
Various theories of causation have been pro-
pounded. It appears, however, to be agreed
that, although in every instance we actually per-
ceive nothing more than that the event, change,'
or phenomenon B always follows the event,
change, or phenomenon A, yet that \ve naturally
believe in the existence of some unknown qual-
ity or circumstance belonging to the antecedent
A, in virtue of which the consequent B always
has been, is, and will be, produced.
JAMES OGILVIE.
Never was man whose apprehensions are
sober, and by pensive inspection advised, but
hath found by an irresistible necessity one ever-
lasting being all forever causing and all for-
ever sustaining. SIR W. RALEIGH.
To every thing we call a cause we ascribe
power to produce the effect. In intelligent
causes, the power may be without being ex-
erted; so I have power to run when I sit still
or walk. But in inanimate causes we conceive
no power but what is exerted, and therefore
measure the power of the cause by the effect
which it actually produces. The power of an
acid to dissolve iron is measured by what it
actually dissolves. T.REID.
It is necessary in such a chain of causes to
ascend to and terminate in some first, which
should be the original of motion, and the cause
cf all other things, but itself be caused by none.
SOUTH.
The first springs of groat events, like those of
great rivers, are otten mean and little.
SWIFT.
CAUTION.
As a man should always be upon his guard
against the vices to which he is most exposed,
so should we take a more than ordinary care
tiot to lie at the mercy of the weather in our
moral conduct. ADDISON.
I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word
when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, " Stay
a little, that we may make an end the sooner."
LORD BACON: Essay XXVI., Of Dispatch.
The swiftest animal conjoined with a heavy
body implies that common mm^\,fesfina lente ;
and that celerity should always be contempered
with cunctation. SIR T. BROWNE.
He that exhorteth to beware of an enemy's
policy doth not give counsel to be impolitic;
but rather to use all prudent foresight and cir-
cumspection lest our simplicity be over-reached
by cunning slights. HOOKER.
One series of consequences will not serve the
turn, but many different and opposite deduc-
tions must be examined, and laid together,
before a man can come to make a right judg-
ment of the point in question. LOCKE.
Some will not venture to look beyond the
received notions of the age, nor have so pre-
sumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their
neighbours. LOCKE.
CAVALIERS.
We now come to the Royalists. We shall
attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of
their antagonists, with perfect candour. We
snail not charge upon a whole party the profli-
gacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers,
and bravoes, whom the hope of license and
plunder attracted from all the dens of White-
friars to the standard of Charles, and who dis-
graced their associates by excesses which under
the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies
were never tolerated. We will select a more
favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that
the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry
and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking
with complacency on the character of the honest
old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in com-
paring them with the instruments which the
despots of other countries are compelled to em-
ploy ; with the mutes who throng their ante-
chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard
at their gates. Our royalist countrymen were
not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every
step and simpering at every word. They were
not mere machines for destruction dressed up
in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into
valour, defending without love, destroying with-
out hatred. There was a freedom in their sub-
serviency, a nobleness in their very degradation.
The sentiment of individual independence was
strong within them. They were indeed misled,
but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion,
and romantic honour, the prejudices of child-
hood; and the venerable names of history, threw
over them a spell as potent as that of Duessa;
and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought
they were doing battle for an injured beauty,
while they defended a false and loathsome
sorceress. LORD MACAULAY :
Milton, Aug. 1825.
CELIBA CY. CENSOR JO US NESS.
89
CELIBACY.
By teaching them how to carry themselves in
their relations of husbands and wives, parents
and children, they have, without question,
adorned the gospel, glorified God, and benefited
man, much more than they could have done in
the devoutest and strictest celibacy.
ATTERBURY.
The most ordinary cause of a single life is
liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and
humourous minds, which are so sensible of
every restraint as they will go near to think
their girdles and garters to be bonds and
nhackles. LORD BACON :
Essay VIII., Of Married and Single Life.
Unmarried men are best friends, best masters,
best servants, but not always best subjects, for
they are light to run away, and almost all fugi-
tives are of that condition. A single life doth
well for churchmen, for charity will hardly
water the ground where it must first fill a pool.
It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for
if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a
servant five times worse than a wife.
LORD BACON:
Essay VIII., Of Married and Single Life.
Certainly wife and children are a kind of dis-
cipline of humanity; and single men, though
they may be many times more charitable, because
their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other
side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted
(good to make severe inquisitors), because their
tenderness is not so oft called upon.
LORD BACON:
Essay VIII. , Of Married and Single Life.
A man shall see the noblest works and foun-
dations have proceeded from childless men ;
which have sought to express the images of
their minds where those of their bodies have
failed : so the care of posterity is most in them
that have no posterity. LORD BACON.
They that have grown old in a single state
are generally found to be morose, fretful, and
captious ; tenacious of their own practices and
maxims ; soon offended by contradiction or neg-
ligence; and impatient of any association but
with those that will watch their nod, and sub-
mit themselves to unlimited authority. Such is
the effect of having lived without the necessity
of consulting any inclination but their own.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 112.
It is hardly necessary to remark much less
to prove that, even supposing there were some
spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be
completely voluntary from day to day, and not
to be enforced by a life-long vow or rule. For
in this case, even though a person should not
repent of such a vow,. no one can be sure that
there is not such repentance. Supposing that
even a large majority, and monks, and nuns,
have no desire to marry, every one of them may
not unreasonably be suspected of such a desire,
and no one of them, consequently, can be se-
cure against the most odious suspicions. No
doubt there are many Roman Catholic clergy
(as there are Protestant) who sincerely prefer
celibacy. But in the one case we have a ground
of assurance of this, which is wanting in the
other. No one can be sure, because no proof
can be given, that a vow of perpetual celibacy
may not some time or other be a matter of
regret. But he who continues to live single
while continuing to have a free choice, gives a
fair evidence of a continued preference for that
life. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay VIII., Of Mar-
ried and Single Life.
CENSORIOUSNESS.
" Censure," says a late ingenious author, " is
the tax a man pays to the public for being emi-
nent." It is a folly for an eminent man to think
of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected
with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity,
and indeed of every age in the world, have
passed through this fiery persecution. There is
no defence against reproach but obscurity ; it is
a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires
and invectives were an essential part of a
Roman triumph.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 101.
Others proclaim the infirmities of a great
man with satisfaction and complacence, if they
discover none of the like in themselves.
ADDISON.
I never knew one who made it his business
to lash the faults of other writers that was not
guilty of greater himself. ADDISON.
Some build rather upon the abusing of others,
and putting tricks upon them, than upon sound-
ness of their own proceedings.
LORD BACON.
Speech of touch towards others should be
sparingly used ; for discourse ought to be as a
field, without coming home to any man.
LORD BACON.
A conscientious person would rather doubt
his own judgment than condemn his species.
He would say, " I have observed without atten-
tion, or judged upon erroneous maxims ; I
trusted to profession, when I ought to have
attended to conduct." Such a man will grow
wise, not malignant, by his acquaintance with
the world. But he that accuses all mankind of
corruption ought to remember that he is sure
to convict only one. In truth, I should much
rather admit those whom at any time I have
disrelished the most to be patterns of perfection,
than seek a consolation to my own un worthiness
in a general communion of depravity with all
about me. BUKKE:
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristvl,
April 3, 1777
9 o
CENSORIOUSNESS. CERVANTES. CHANCE.
It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem
paradoxical, but, in general, those who are
habitually employed in finding and displaying
faults are unqualified for the work of reforma-
tion ; because their minds are not only unfur-
nished with patterns of the fair and good, but
by habit they come to take no delight in the
contemplation of those things. By hating vices
too much, they come to love men too little. It
is, therefore, not wonderful that they should be
indisposed and unable to serve them.
BURKE:
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1 790.
Just as you are pleased at finding faults you
re displeased at finding perfections.
LAVATER.
A small mistake may leave upon the mind
the lasting memory of having been taunted for
something censurable. LOCKE.
Such as are still observing upon others are
like those who are always abroad at other men's
houses, reforming everything there, while their
own runs to ruin. POPE:
7"houghts on Various Subjects.
When the tongue is the weapon, a man may
strike where he cannot reach, and a word shall
do execution both further and deeper than the
mightiest blow. SOUTH.
Nothing can justly be despised that cannot
justly be blamed : where there is no choice
there can be no blame. SOUTH.
I know no manner of speaking so offensive
as that of giving praise and closing it with an
exception ; which proceeds (where men do not
do it to introduce malice and make calumny
more effectual) from the common error of con-
sidering man as a perfect creature. But, if we
rightly examine things, we shall find that there
is a sort of economy in Providence, that one
shall excel where another is defective, in order
to make men more useful to each other, and
mix them in society. This man having this
talent, and that man another, is as necessary in
conversation, as one professing one trade, and
another another, is beneficial in commerce.
The happiest climate does not produce all
things ; and it was so ordered, that one part of
the earth should want the product of another,
for uniting mankind in a general correspondence
and good understanding. It is, therefore, want
of sense as well as good nature, to say, Simpli-
cius has a better judgment, but not so much wit
as Latius ; for that these have not each other's
capacities is no more a diminution to either,
than if you should say, Simplicius is not Latius,
or Latius not Simplicius. ,
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 92.
Shallow wits, superficial critics, and conceited
fops, are with me so many blind men in respect
of excellences. They can behold nothing but
faults and blemishes, and indeed see nothing
that is worth seeing. Show them a poem, it is
stuff; a picture, it is daubing. They find no-
thing in architecture that is not irregular, or in
music that is not out of tune. These men
should consider that it is their envy which de-
forms everything, and that the ugliness is not in
the object, but in the eye. And as for nobler
minds, whose merits are either not discovered,
or are misrepresented by the envious part of
mankind, they should rather consider their de-
famers with pity than indignation. A man can-
not have an idea of perfection in another, which
he was never sensible of in himself.
. SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 227.
When one considers the turn which conver
sation takes in almost every set of acquaintance,
club, or assembly in this town or kingdom, one
cannot but observe that, in spite of what I am
every day saying, and all the moral writers
since the beginning of the world have said, the
subject of discourse is generally upon one an-
other's faults. This, in a great measure, pro-
ceeds from self-conceit, which were to be
endured in one or other individual person ; but
the folly has spread itself almost over all the
species ; and one cannot only say Tom, Jack,
or Will, but, in general, " that man is a cox
comb." From this source it is, that any excel-
lence is faintly received, any imperfection
unmercifully exposed.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 246.
It is some commendation that we have avoided
to characterize any person without long experi-
ence. SWIFT.
CERVANTES.
Cervantes is the delight of all classes of
readers. Every school-boy thumbs to pieces the
most wretched' translations of his romance, and
knows the lantern jaws of the Knight Errant,
and the broad cheeks of the Squire, as well as
the faces of his own playfellows. The most
experienced and fastidious judges are amazed
at the perfection of that art which extracts in-
extinguishable laughter from the greatest of
human calamities without once violating the
reverence due to it; at that discriminating deli-
cacy of touch which makes a character ex-
quisitely ridiculous without impairing its worth,
its grace, or its dignity. In Don Quixote are
several dissertations on the principles of poetic
and dramatic writing. No passages in the whole
work exhibit stronger marks of labour and
attention ; and no passages in any work with
which we are acquainted are more worthless
and puerile. In our time they would scarcely
obtain admittance into the literary derailment
of The Morning Post.
LORD MACAULAV: John Drydtn
CHANCE.
The adequate meaning of chance, as distin-
guished from fortune, is that the latter is under-
stood to befall only rational agents, but chance
to be among inanimate bodies.
BENTLEY.
CHANCE. CHARA CTER.
Chance is but a mere name, and really nothing
in itself; a conception of our minds, and only
a compendious way of speaking, whereby we
would express that such effects as are commonly
attributed to chance were verily produced by
their true and proper causes, but without their
design to produce them. BENTLEY.
It is strictly and philosophically true in nature
and reason, that there is no such thing as chance
or accident ; it being evident that these words
do not signify anything really existing, anything
that is truly an agent or the cause of any event ;
but they signify merely men's ignorance of the
real and immediate cause.
ADAM CLARKE.
Chance is but the pseudonyme of God for
those particular cases which He does not choose
to subscribe openly with his own sign-manual.
COLERIDGE.
Time and chance happeneth to them all.
Eccl, ix. II. The meaning is, that the success
of these outward things is not always carried
by desert, but by chance in regard to us, though
by Providence in regard of God.
HAKE WILL.
There must be chance in the midst of design ;
by which we mean, that events which are not
designed necessarily arise from the pursuit of
events which are designed. PALEY.
The opposites of apparent chance are con-
stancy and sensible interposition. . PALEY.
Some utterly proscribe the name of chance,
as a word of impious and profane signification;
and indeed if taken by us in that sense in which
it was used by the heathen, so as to make any-
thing casual in respect to God himself, their
exception ought justly to be admitted.
SOUTH.
To say a thing is chance or casualty, as it
relates to second causes, is not profaneness, but
a great truth ; as signifying no more than that
there are some events beside the knowledge,
purpose, expectation, and power of second
causes. SOUTH.
CHARACTER.
I am very much pleased with a consolatory
letter of Phalaris, to one who had lost a son
who was a young man of great merit. The
thought with which he comforts the afflicted
father is, to the best of my memory, as follows :
That he should consider death had set a kind
of seal upon his son's character, and placed him
out of the reach of vice and infamy ; that, while
he lived, he was still within the possibility of
falling away from virtue, and losing the fame
of which he was possessed. Death only closes
a man's reputation, and determines it as good
or bad.
This, among other motives, may be one rea-
ion why we are naturally averse to the launch-
ing out into a man's praise till his head is laid
in the dust. Whilst he is capable of changing,
we may be forced to retract our opinions. He
may forfeit the esteem we have conceived of
him, and some time or other appear to us under
a different light from what he does at present.
In short, as the life of any man cannot Ix: called
happy or unhappy, so neither can it be pro-
nounced vicious or virtuous, before the conclu-
sion of it.
It was upon this consideration that Epami-
nondas, being asked whether Chabrias, Iphic-
rates, or he himself, deserved most to be
esteemed? "You must first see us die, ' saith
he, " before that question can be answered."
As there is not a more melancholy considera-
tion to a good man than his being obnoxious to
such a change, so there is nothing more glorious
than to keep up a uniformity in his actions and
preserve the beauty of his character to the last.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 349.
A good character, when established, should
not be rested in as an end, but only employed
as a means of doing still farther good.
ATTERBURY.
The characters of men placed in lower stations
of life are more useful, as being imitable by
greater numbers. ATTERBURY.
If you would work any man, you must either
know his nature or fashions, and so lead him ;
or his ends, and so persuade him ; or his weak-
ness and disadvantages, and so awe him; or
those that have interest in him, and so govern
him. In dealing with cunning persons we
must ever consider their ends to interpret their
speeches ; and it is good to say little to them,
and that which they least look for. In all ne-
gotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to
sow and reap at once; but must prepare busi-
ness, and so ripen it by degrees.
LORD BACON:
Essay XLVIIL, Of Negotiating.
The best composition and temperature is to
have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in
habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a
power to feign, if there be no remedy.
LORD BACON.
Multitude of jealousies, and lack of some pre-
dominant desire that should marshal and put
in order all the rest, maketh any man's heart
hard to find or sound. LORD BACON.
The heart is pinched up and contracted by
the very studies which ought to have enlarged
it, if we keep all our praise for the triumphant
and glorified virtues, and all our uneasy suspi-
cions, and doubts, and criticisms, and excepticns,
for the companions of our warfare. A mind
that is tempered as it ought, or aims to come to
the temper it ought to have, will measure out
its just proportion of confidence and esteem for
a man of invariable rectitude, of principle,
steadiness in friendship, moderation in temper,
and a perfect freedom from all ambition, du-
CHARACTER.
plicity, and revenge ; though the owner of these
inestimable qualities is seen in the tavern and on
the pavement, as well as in the senate, or appear-
ing with much more decency than solemnity even
there.
BURKE : To Lord John Cavendish.
Far from taking away its value, everything
which makes virtue accessible, simple, familiar,
and companionable, makes its use more fre-
quent, and its reality a great deal less doubtful.
Neither, I apprehend, is the value of great
qualities taken away by the defects or errors
that are most nearly related to them. Sim-
plicity, and a want of ambition, do something
detract from the splendour of great qualities;
and men of moderation will sometimes be de-
fective in vigour. Minds (and these are the
best minds) which are more fearful of reproach
than desirous of glory, will want that extempo-
raneous promptitude, and that decisive stroke,
which are often so absolutely necessary in great
affairs.
BURKE : To Lord John Cavendish.
Instead of saying that man is the creature of
circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to
say that man is the architect of circumstance.
Our strength is measured by our plastic power.
From the same materials one man builds pal-
aces, another hovels ; one warehouses, another
villas : bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks,
until the architect can make them something
ebe. Thus it is that in the same family, in the
same circumstances, one man rears a stately edi-
fice, while his brother, vacillating and incom-
petent, lives forever amid ruins : the block of
granite which was an obstacle in the pathway
of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the
pathway of the strong. CARLYLE.
He that has never suffered extreme adversity
knows not the full extent of his own deprava-
tion ; and he that has never enjoyed the summit
of prosperity is equally ignorant how far the
iniquity of others can go. For our adversity
will excite temptations in ourselves, or pros-
perity in others. COLTON : Lacon.
He that acts towards men as if God saw him,
and prays to God as if men heard him, although
h^ may not obtain all that he asks, or succeed
ir all that he undertakes, will most probably
deserve to do so. For with respect to his ac-
tions to men, however he may fail with regard
to others, yet if pure and good, with regard to
himself and his highest interests they cannot
fail; and with respect to his prayers to God, al-
though they cannot make the Deity more "will-
ing; to give, yet they will and must make the
supplicant more worthy to receive.
COLTON : Lacon.
There are four classes of men in the world :
first, those whom every one would wish to talk
to, and whom every one does talk of; these
are that small minority that constitute the great.
Secondly, those whom no one wishes to talk to,
and whom no one does talk of; these are that
vast majority that constitute the little. The
third class is made up of those whom every-
body talks of, but nobody talks to; these con-
stitute the knaves ; and the fourth is composed
of those whom everybody talks to, but whom
nobody talks of; and these constitute the focls.
COLTON : Lacon.
Very advantageous exercise to incite atten-
tive observation and sharpen the discriminating
faculty, to compel one's self to sketch the char-
acter of each person one knows.
JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
Distinguished merit will ever rise superior to
oppression, and will draw lustre from reproach.
The vapours which gather round the rising sun
and follow it in its course seldom fail at the
close of it to form a magnificent theatre for its
reception, and to invest with variegated tints,
and with a softened effulgence, the luminary
which they cannot hide.
ROBERT HALL :
Christianity Consistent with a Love of
Freedom.
Our most secret doings, nay, what we imagine
to be our inmost thoughts, are often the open
talk and jeer of hundreds of people with whom
we have never interchanged a word. That more
people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows, is,
though at once a truism and a vulgarism, a pro-
found and philosophic axiom. Despise not the
waiter, for he may know you thoroughly. Be
careful what you do or say, for there are hun-
dreds of machicolated crevices in every dead
wall, whence spy-glasses are pointed at you ;
and the sky above is darkened with little birds,
eager to carry matters concerning you. Dio ti
vede (God sees thee) they write on the walls in
Italy. A man's own heart should tell him this ;
but his common sense should tell him likewise
that men are also always regarding him; that
the streets are full of eyes, the walls of ears.
Household Words.
Yet such is the state of all moral virtue, that
it is always uncertain and variable, sometimes
extending to the whole compass of duty, and
sometimes shrinking into a narrower space, and
fortifying only a few avenues of the heart, while
all the rest is left open to the incursions of ap-
petite, or given up to the dominion of wicked-
ness. Nothing therefore is more unjust than to
judge of man by too short an acquaintance and
too slight inspection; for it often happens that
in the loose, and thoughtless, and dissipated,
there is a secret radical worth, which may shoot
out by proper cultivation; that the spark of
Heaven, though dimmed and obstructed, is yet
not extinguished, but may by the breath of
counsel and exhortation be kindled into flame
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 70.
It is a painful fact, but there is no denying it,
the mass are the tools of circumstance; thistle-
down on the breeze, straw on the river, their
course is shaped for them by the currents and
eddies of the stream of life ; but only in proper
CHARACTER.
93
tion as they are things, not men and women.
Man was meant to be not the slave, but the
master of circumstance ; and in proportion as he
recovers his humanity, in every sense of the
great obsolete word, in proportion as he gets
back the spirit of manliness, which is self-sacri-
fire, affection, loyalty to an idea beyond himself,
a God above himself, so far will he rise above
circumstances and wield them at his will.
REV. C. KINGSLEY.
Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alpha-
6et by which you may spell characters.
LAVATER.
The heart of man looks fair, but when we
come to lay any weight upon't the ground is
f alse under us. L" ESTRANGE.
Characters drawn on dust, that the first breath
of wind effaces, are altogether as useful as the
thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking.
LOCKE.
We must not hope wholly to change their
original tempers; nor make the gay pensive and
grave, nor the melancholy sportive, without
spoiling them. LOCKE.
He that is found reasonable in one thing is
concluded to be so in all ; and to think or say
otherwise is thought so unjust an affront, and so
senseless a censure, that nobody ventures to do
it. LOCKE.
The flexibleness of the former part of a man's
age, not yet grown up to be headstrong, makes
it more governable and safe ; and in the after-
part reason and foresight begin a little to take
place, and mind a man of his safety and im-
provement. LOCKE.
There is, in one respect, a remarkable analogy
between the faces and the minds of men. No
two faces are alike ; and yet very few faces de-
viate very widely from the common standard.
Among the eighteen hundred thousand human
beings who inhabit London there is not one who
could be taken by his acquaintance for another;
yet we may walk from Paddington to Mile End
without seeing one person in whom any feature
is so overcharged that we turn round to stare at
it. An infinite number of varieties lies between
limits which are not very far asunder. The
specimens which pass those limits on either side
form a very small minority.
It is the same with the characters of men.
Here, too, the variety passes all enumeration.
But the cases in which the deviation from the
common standard is striking and grotesque, are
very few. In one mind avarice predominates;
in another, pride; in a third, love of pleasure;
just as in one countenance the nose is the most
marked feature, while in others the chief ex-
pression lies in the brow, or in the lines of the
mouth. But there are very few countenances
in which nose, brow, and mouth do not con-
tribute, though in unequal degrees, to the gen-
eral effect ; and so there are very few characters
in which one overgrown propensity makes all
others utterly insignificant.
It is evident that a portrait-painter who was
able only to represent faces and figures such as
those which we pay money to see at fail? would
not, however spirited his execution might be, take
rank among the highest artists. He must always
be placed below those who have skill to seize
peculiarities which do not amount to deformity.
The slighter those peculiarities, the greater is
the merit of the limner who can catch ihem and
transfer them to his canvas. To paint Daniel
Lambert or the living skeleton, the pig-faced
lady or the Siamese twins, so that nobody can
mistake them, is an exploit within the reach of
a sign-painter. A third-rate artist might give
us the squint of Wilkes, and the depressed nose
and protuberant cheeks of Gibbon. It would
require a much higher degree of skill to paint
two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas
Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen
them could for a moment hesitate to assign each
picture to its original. Here the mere carica-
turist would be quite at fault. He would find
in neither face anything on which he could lay
hold for the purpose of making a distinction.
Two ample bald foreheads, two regular profiles,
two full faces of the same oval form, would
baffle his art; and he would be reduced to the
miserable shift of writing their names at the foot
of his picture. Yet there was a great difference ;
and a person who had seen them once would
no more have mistaken one of them for the
other than he would have mistaken Mr. Pitt for
Mr. "Fox. But the difference lay in delicatv
lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a
rare order.
This distinction runs through all the imitative
arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous,
but it was all caricature. He could take off only
some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a
Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop
or a shuffle. " If a man," said Johnson, " hops
on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Gar-
rick, on the other hand, could seize those differ-
ences of manner and pronunciation" which,
though highly characteristic, are yet too slight
to be described. Foote, we have no doubt,
could have made the Haymarket theatre shake
with laughter by imitating a conversation be-
tween a Scotchman and a Somersetshireman.
But Garrick could have imitated a conversation
between two fashionable men, boih models of
the best breeding, Lord Chesterfield, for ex
ample, and Lord Albemarle, so that no person
could doubt which was which, although no
person could say that, in any point, either Lord
Chesterfield or Lord Albemarle spoke or moved
otherwise than in conformity with the best usages
of the best society.
LORD MACAU LAY :
Madame D'Arblay, Jan. 184.3.
Insensibility, in return for acts of seeming,
even of real, unkindness, is not required of us.
But, whilst we feel for such acts, let our feelings
be tempered with forbearance and kindness.
CHAR A CTER. CHARITY.
Let not the sense of our own sufferings render
us peevish and morose. Let not our sense of
neglect on the part of others induce us to judge
of them with harshness and severity. Let us
be indulgent and compassionate towards them.
Let us seek for apologies for their conduct. Let
us be forward in endeavouring to excuse them.
And if, in the end, we must condemn them, let
us look for the cause of their delinquency, less
in a defect of kind intention than in the weak-
ness and errors of human nature. He who
knoweth of what we are made, and hath learned,
by what he himself suffered, the weakness and
frailty of our nature, hath thus taught us to make
compassionate allowances for our brethren, in
consideration of its manifold infirmities.
BISHOP MANT.
Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering,
riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance,
power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civ-
ilization and barbarity, have all their offices and
duties : all serve for the formation of character.
PALEY.
I have lived a sinful life, in all sinful callings ;
for I have been a soldier, a captain, a sea-cap-
tain, and a courtier, which are all places of
wickedness and vice. SIR W. RALEIGH.
There is no man at once either excellently
good or extremely evil, but grows either as he
holds himself up in virtue or lets himself slide
to viciousness. SIR P. SIDNEY.
As a man thinks or desires in his heart, $uch,
indeed, he is; for then most truly, because most
incontrollably, he acts himself. SOUTH.
Everything in Asia public safety, national
honour, personal reputation rests upon the
force 01" individual character. . . . The officer
who forgets that he is a gentleman does more
harm to the moral influence of this country than
ten men of blameless life can do good.
LORD STANLEY :
To the Students at Addiscombe.
It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there
is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
SWIFT.
If things were once in this train, if virtue
were established as necessary to reputation, and
vice not only loaded with infamy, but made the
infallible ruin of all men's pretensions, our
duty would take root in our nature
SWIFT,
He whose life seems fair, yet if all his errors
and follies were articled against him the man
would seem vicious and miserable.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
In common discourse we denominate persons
and things according to the major part of their
character : he is to be called a wise man who
has but few follies. DR. I. WATTS.
It is worth mentioning, that your judgment
of any one's character who has done anything
wrong ought to be exactly the same whether
the wrong was done to you or to any one else.
A man who has cheated or slandered you is
neither more nor less a cheat and a slanderer
than if it had been some other person, a stranger
to you. This is evident ; yet there is great need
to remind people of it ; for, as the very lowest
minds of all regard with far the most disappro-
bation any wrong from which they themselves
suffer, so, those a few steps, and only a few,
above them, in their dread of such manifest in-
justice, think they cannot bend the twig too far
the contrary way, and are for regarding (in the-
ory, at least, if not in practice) wrongs to oneself
as no wrongs at all. Such a person will reckon
it a point of heroic generosity to let loose on
society a rogue who has cheated him, and to
leave uncensured and unexposed a liar by \vhom
he has been belied ; and the like in other cases.
And if you refuse favour and countenance to
those unworthy of it, whose misconduct has at
all affected you, he will at once attribute this to
personal vindictive feelings ; as if there could be
no such thing as esteem and disesteem.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon 1 s Essay, Of Revenge.
These two things, contradictory as they may
seem, must go together, manly dependence and
manly independence, manly reliance and manly
self-reliance. WORDSWORTH.
CHARITY.
It instils into their minds the utmost virulence,
instead of that charity which is the perfection
and ornament of religion. ADDISON.
What we employ in charitable uses during our
lives is given away from ourselves: what we
bequeath at our death is given from others only,
as our nearest relations. ATTERBURY.
Let us remember those that want necessaries,
as we ourselves should have desired to be re-
membered had it been our sad lot to subsist on
other men's charity. ATTERBURY.
Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested
more pressing motives, more powerful incentives
to charity, than these, that we shall be judged
by it at the last dreadful day.
ATTERBURY.
The smallest act of charity shall stand us iu
great stead. ATTEKBURY.
How shall we then wish that it might be al-
lowed us to live over our lives again, in order to
fill every minute of them with charitable offices I
ATTERBURY.
Chanty is more extensive than either of the
two other graces, which centre ultimately in our-
selves : for we believe and we hope for our own
sakes ; but love, which is a more disinterested
principle, carries us out of ourselves into desires
and endeavours of promoting the interests of
other beings. ATTERBURY.
CHARITY.
95
Christian graces and virtues they cannot be
unless fed, invigorated, and animated by uni-
versal charity. ATTERBURY.
Goodness answers to the theological virtue
chaiity, and admits no excess but error : the de-
sire of power in excess caused the angels to fall ;
the desire of knowledge in excess caused man
to fall ; but in charity there is no excess : neither
can angel or man come into danger by it.
LORD BACON.
Because men believe not Providence, therefore
they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do
not believe any reward for charity, therefore
they will part with ndthing. BARROW.
Nothing seems much clearer than the natural
direction of charity. Would we all but relieve,
according to the measure of our means, those
objects immediately within the range of our
personal knowledge, how much of the worst
evil of poverty might be alleviated ! Very poor
people, who are known to us to have been de-
cent, honest, and industrious, when industry was
in their power, have a claim on us, founded on
our knowledge, and on vicinity and neighbour-
hood, which have in themselves something
sacred and endearing to every good heart. One
cannot, surely, always pass by, in his walks for
health, restoration, or delight, the lone wayside
beggar without occasionally giving him an alms.
Old, care-worn, pale, drooping, and emaciated
creatures, who pass us by without looking be-
seechingly at us, or even lifting up their eyes
from the ground, cannot often be met with
without exciting an interest in us for their silent
and unobtrusive sufferings or privations. A
hovel, here and there, round and about our own
comfortable dwelling, attracts our eyes by some
peculiar appearance of penury, and we look in,
now and then, upon its inmates, cheering their
cold gloom with some small benefaction. These
are duties all men owe to distress : they are
easily discharged ; and even such tender mer-
cies are twice blessed. DR. T. CHALMERS.
Poplicola's doors were opened on the outside,
to save the people even the common civility of
asking entrance ; where misfortune was a pow-
erful recommendation, and where want itself
was a powerful mediator. DRYDEN.
My errors, I hope, are only those of chanty
to mankind ; and such as my own charity has
caused me to commit, that of others may more
easily excuse. DRYDEN.
If we can return to that charity and peace-
able-mindedness which Christ so vehemently
recommended to us, we have his own promise
that the whole body will be full of light, Matth.
vi.; that all other Christian virtues will, by way
of recomrnittance or annexation, attend them.
HAMMOND.
Here is another magistrate propounding from
the seat of justice the stupendous nonsense that
it is desirable that every person who gives alms
in the streets should be fined for that offence.
This to a Christian people, and with the Nevr
Testament lying before him as a sort of dum-
my, I suppose, to swear witnesses on. Why
does my so-easily-frightened nationality not take
offence at such things? My hobby shies at
shadows ; why does it amble so quietly past
these advertising-vans of Blockheads seeking
notoriety ? Household Words.
Charity is an universal duty, which it is in
every man's power sometimes to practise; since
every degree of assistance given to another,
upon proper motives, is an act of charity ; and
there is scarcely any man in such a state of im
becility as that he may not, on some occasions,
benefit his neighbour. He that cannot relieve
the poor may instruct .the ignorant ; and he
that cannot attend the sick may reclaim tht
vicious. He that can give little assistance him-
self may yet perform the duty of charity by in-
flaming the ardour of others, and recommend-
ing the petitions which he cannot grant, to those
who have more to bestow. The widow that
shall give her mite to the treasury, the poor man
who shall bring to the thirsty a cup of cold
water, shall not lose their reward.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
Money we either lock-up in chests, or waste
it in needless and ridiculous expenses upon our-
selves, whilst the poor and the distressed want
it for necessary uses. LAW.
He that rightly understands the reasonable-
ness and excellency of charity will know that
it can never be excusable to waste any of out
money in pride and folly. LAW.
All men ought to maintain peace and the
common offices of humanity and friendship in
diversity of opinions. LOCKE.
The little I have seen of the world and know
of the history of mankind teaches me to look
upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.
When I take the history of one poor heart that
has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself
the struggles and temptations it has passed the
brief pulsations of joy the feverish inquietude
of hope and fear the tears of regret the feeble-
ness of purpose the pressure of want the de-
sertion of friends the scorn of the world, that
has little charity the desolation of the soul's
sanctuary, and threatening voices from within
health gone happiness gone even hope, that
stays longest with us, gone, I have little heart
for aught else than thankfulness that it is not so
with me, and would fain leave the erring soul
of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands
it came. LONGFELLOW : Hyperion.
It is another's fault if he be ungrateful ; but
it is mine if I do not give. To find one thank-
ful man, I will oblige many that are not so.
^ SENECA.
That charity alone endures which flows from
a sense of duty and a hope in God. This is the
charity that treads in secret those paths of mis-
ery from which all but the lowest of human
9 6
CHARITY. CHARLES THE SECOND.
wretches have fled : this is that charity which no
labour can weary, no ingratitude detach, no
horror disgust ; that toils, that pardons, that suf-
fers ; that is seen by no man, and honoured by
no man, but, like the great laws of nature, does
the work of God in silence, and looks to a future
and better world for its reward.
REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
When thy brother has lost all that he ever had,
and lies languishing, and even gasping under the
utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost
thou think to lick him whole again only with
thy tongue? SOUTH.
The measures that God marks out to thy
charity are these: thy superfluities must give
place to thy neighbour's great convenience ; thy
convenience must yield to thy neighbour's ne-
cessity ; and, lastly, thy very necessities must
yield to thy neighbour's extremity. SOUTH.
That charity is bad which takes from inde-
pendence its proper pride, from mendicity its
salutary shame. SOUTHEY.
In all works of liberality something more is
to be considered besides the occasion of the
givers ; and that is the occasion of the receivers.
SPRAT.
Charity is made the constant companion and
perfection of all virtues ; and well it is for that
virtue where it most enters and longest stays.
SPRAT.
A man must have great impudence to profess
himself a Christian, and yet to think himself not
obliged to do acts of charity.
STILLINGFLEET.
What can be a greater honour than to be
chosen one of the stewards and dispensers of
God's bounty to mankind ? What can give a
generous spirit more complacency than to con-
sider that great numbers owe to him, under
God, their subsistence, and the good conduct
of their lives ? SWIFT.
God is pleased with no music below so much
as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows,
of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and com-
forted, and thankful persons. This part of our
communication does the work of God and of
our neighbours, and bears us to heaven in
streams made by the overflowing of our brother's
con? fort. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Let the women of noble birth and great for-
tunes visit poor cottages and relieve their neces-
sities. JEREMY TAYLOR.
It is no great matter to live lovingly with
good-natured and meek persons ; but he that
can do so with the froward and precise, he only
hath true charity. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Charity taken in its largest extent is nothing
else but the sincere love of God and our neigh-
bour. WAKE.
Free converse with persons of different sects
will enlarge our charity towards others, and in-
cline us to receive them into all the degrees of
unity and affection which the word of God re-
quires. DR. I. WATTS.
CHARLES THE SECOND.
Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity ;
thou knowest what it is to be banished thy
native country, to be over-ruled, as well as to
rule and sit upon the throne ; and, being op-
pressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful
the oppressor is both to God and man : if after
all these warnings and advertisements thou dost
not turn unto the Lord with all thy heart, but
forget him who remembered thee in thy dis-
tress, and give up thyself to follow lust and
vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation.
ROBERT BARCLAY :
To the King : preface to An Apology for
the True Christian Divinity, 25th
Nov. 1675.
The person given to us by Monk was a man
without any sense of his duty as a prince, with-
out any regard to the dignity of his crown,
without any love to his people, dissolute, false,
venal, and destitute of any positive good quality
whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the
manners of a gentleman. Yet the restoration
of our monarchy, even in the person of such a
prince, was everything to us; for without mon-
archy in England, most certainly we never can
enjoy either peace or liberty.
BURKE:
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly %
Jan. 19, 1791.
Then came those days, never to be recalled
without a blush, the days of servitude without
loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish
talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold
hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the
coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King
cringed to his rival that he might trample on his
people, sank into a viceroy of France, and
pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading
insults and her more degrading gold. The
caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons,
regulated the policy of the state. The govern-
ment had just ability enough to deceive, and just
religion enough to persecute! The principles
of liberty were the scoft" of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every
fawning dean. In every high place, worship was
paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch ;
and England propitiated those obscene and
cruel idols with the blood of her best and
bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime,
and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed
of God and man, was a second time driven
forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and
to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to
the nations.
LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.
CHARLES THE SECOND. CHEERFULNESS.
97
Then commenced the reflux of public opin-
ion. The nation began to find out to what a
man it had intrusted, without conditions, all its
dearest interests, on what a man it had lavished
all its fondest affection. On the ignoble nature
of the restored exile adversity had exhausted all
her discipline in vain. He had one immense
advantage over most other princes. Though
born in the purple, he was far better acquainted
with the vicissitudes of life and the diversities
cf character than most of his subjects. He had
known restraint, danger, penury, and depend-
ence. He had often suffered from ingratitude,
insolence, and treachery. He had received many
signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment.
He had seen, if ever man saw, both sides of
human nature. But Only one side remained in
his memory. He had learned only to despise
and to distrust his species, to consider integrity
in men, and modesty in women, as mere acting;
nor did he think it worth while to keep his opin-
ion to himself. He was incapable of friend-
ship; yet he was perpetually led by favourites
without being in the smallest degree duped by
them. He knew that their regard to his interest
was all simulated ; but, from a certain easiness
which had no connection with humanity, he
submitted, half laughing at himself, to be made
the tool of any woman whose person attracted
him, or of any man whose tattle diverted him.
He thought little and cared less about religion.
He seems to have passed his life in dawdling
suspense between fiohbism and Popery. He
was crowned in his youth with the Covenant in
his hand ; he died at last with the Host sticking
in his throat; and dining most of the interme-
diate years was occupied in persecuting both
Covenanters and Catholics. . . . To do him
justice, his temper was good ; his manners
agreeable ; his natural talents above mediocrity.
But he was sensual, frivolous, false, and cold-
hearted, beyond almost any prince of whom
history makes mention.
LORD MACAULAY :
Sir James Mackintosh, July, 1835.
CHEERFULNESS.
If we consider cheerfulness in three lights,
with regard to ourselves, to those we converse
with, and to the great Author of our being, it
will not a little recommend itself on each of
these accounts. The man who is possessed of
this excellent frame of mind is not only easy in
his thoughts, but a perfect master of all the
powers and faculties of his soul. His imagi-
nation is always clear, and his judgment undis-
turbed ; his temper is even and unruffled, whether
in action or in solitude. He comes with relish
to all those good- which nature has provided
for him, tastes all the pleasures of the creation
which are poured about him, and does not feel
the full weight of those accidental evils which
may befall him.
If we consider him in relation to the persons
7
whom he converses with, it naturally produces
love and good will towards him. A cheerful
mind is not only disposed to be affable and
obliging, but raises the same good humour in
those who come within its influence. A man
finds himself pleased, he does not^.know why,
with the cheerfulness of his companion. It is
like a sudden sunshine that awakens a secret
delight in the mind, without her attending to it.
The heart rejoices of its own accord, and natu-
rally flows out into friendship and benevolence
towards the person who has so kindly an effe< t
upon it.
When I consider this cheerful state of mind
in its third relation, I cannot but look upon it
as a constant habitual gratitude to the great
Author of nature. An inward cheerfulness is
an implicit praise and thanksgiving to Provi-
dence under all its dispensations. It is a kind
of acquiescence in the state wherein we are
placed, and a secret approbation of the Divine
Will in his conduct towards man.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 381.
I have, in former papers, shown how great 9
tendency there is to cheerfulness in religion, and
how such a frame of mind is not only the most
lovely, but, the most commendable, in a virtuous
person. In short, those who represent religion
in so unamiable a light are like the spies sent
by Moses to make a discovery of the land of
promise, when by their reports they discouraged
the people from entering upon it. Those who
show us the joy, the cheerfulness, the good
humour, that naturally springs up in this happy
state, are like the spies bringing along with them
the clusters of grapes and delicious fruits that
might invite their companions into the pleasant
country which produced them.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 494.
I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth.
The latter I consider as an act, the former as a
habit, of the mind. ADDISON.
I would not laugh but to instruct; or, if my
mirth ceases to be instructive, it shall never
cease to be innocent. ADDISON.
To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at
hours of meat, sleep, and exercise, is one of the
best precepts of long lasting.
LORD BACON.
Between levity and cheerfulness there is a
wide distinction ; and the mind which is most
open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheer-
fulness. It has been remarked that transports
of intemperate mirth are often no more than
flashes from the dark cloud ; and that in pro-
portion to the violence of the effulgence is the
succeeding gloom. Levity may be the forced
production of folly or vice; cheerfulness is the
natural offspring of wisdom and virtue only.
The one is an occasional agitation ; the other a
permanent habit. The one degrades the char-
acter ; the other is perfectly consistent with the
dignity of reason, and the steady and manly
spirit of religion. To aim at a constant succes
9 8
CHEERFULNESS. CHILDREN.
si )n of high and vivid sensations of pleasure
is an idea of happiness perfectly chimerical.
Calm and temperate enjoyment is the utmost
that is allotted to man. Beyond this we struggle
in vain to raise our state; and in fact depress
our joys by endeavouring to heighten them.
Instead of those fallacious hopes of perpetual
festivity with which the world would allure us,
religion confers upon us a cheerful tranquillity.
Instead of dazzling us with meteors of joy
which sparkle and expire, it sheds around us a
calm and steady light, more solid, more equal,
and more lasting. HUGH BLAIR.
Give us, O give us the man who sings at his
work ! Be his occupation what it may, he is
equal to any of those who follow the same pur-
suit in silent sullenness. He will do more in
the same time he will do it better he will
persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of
fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very
stars are said to make harmony as they revolve
in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of
cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its
powers of endurance. Efforts, to be perma-
nently useful, must be uniformly joyous a
spirit all sunshine graceful from very gladness
beautiful because bright. CARLYLE.
Be cheerful, no matter what reverse obstruct
your pathway, or what plagues follow you in
your trail to annoy you. Ask yourself what is
to be gained by looking or feeling sad when
troubles throng around you, or how your con-
dition is to be alleviated by abandoning yourself
to despondency. If you are a young man,
nature designed you to "be of good cheer;"
and should you find your road to fortune, fame,
or respectability, or any other boon to which
your young heart aspires, a little thorny, con-
sider it all for the best, and that these impedi-
ments are only thrown in your way to induce
greater efforts and more patient endurance on
your part. Far better spend a whole life in
diligent, aye, cheerful and unremitting toil,
though you never attain the pinnacle of your
ambitious desires, than to turn back at the first
, appearance of misfortune, and allow despair to
unnerve your energies, or sour your naturally
sweet and cheerful disposition. If you are of
the softer, fairer portion of humanity, be cheer-
ful ; though we know full well that most affec-
tions are sweet to you when compared with dis-
appointment and neglect, yet let hope banish
despair and ill forebodings. Be cheerful: do
not brood over fond hopes unrealized, until a
chain, link after link, is fastened on each
thought and wound around the heart. Nature
intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheer-
fulness and social life, and not the travelling
monument of despair and melancholy.
SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
This gamesome humour of children should
rather be encouraged, to keep up their spirits
and improve their strength and health, than
curbed or restrained. LOCKE.
There is no Christian duty that is not to be
seasoned and set off with cheerishness, which
in a thousand outward and intermitting crosses
may yet be done well, as in this vale of tears.
MILTON.
Mirth and cheerfulness are but the due reward
of innocence of life. SIR T. MORE.
Quietness improves into cheerfulness enough
to make me just so good-humoured as to wish
the world well. POPE.
Whatever we do, we should keep the cheei-
fulness of our spirits, and never let them sink
below an inclination at least to be well pleased.
The way to this, is to keep our bodies in exer-
cise, our minds at ease. That insipid state
wherein neither are in vigour, is not to be ac-
counted any part of our portion of being. When
we are in the satisfaction of some innocent
pleasure, or pursuit of some laudable design,
we are in the possession of life, of human life.
Fortune will give us disappointments enough,
without our adding to the unhappy side of our
account by our spleen or ill humour.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 143.
Cheerfulness is always to be supported if a
man is out of pain, but mirth to a prudent man
should always be accidental. It should naturally
arise out of the occasion, and the occasion sel-
dom laid out for it : for those tempers who
want mirth to be pleased are like the constitu-
tions which flag without the use of brandy.
Therefore I say, let your precept be, " Be easy."
That mind is dissolute and ungoverned which
must be hurried out of itself by loud laughter
or sensual pleasure, or else be wholly inactive.
SIR R. STEELE.
Such a man, truly wise, creams off nature,
leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy
and reason to lap up. SwiFT.
CHILDREN.
It is of the last importance to season the
passions of a child with devotion, which seldom
dies in a mind that has received an early tinc-
ture of it. Though it may seem extinguished
for a while by the cares of the world, the heat*
of youth, or the allurements of vice, it gener-
ally breaks out and discovers itself again as
soon as discretion, consideration, age, or mis-
fortunes have brought the man to himself.
The fire may be - covered and overlaid, but
cannot be entirely quenched and smothered.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 201.
When I see the motherly airs of my little
daughters when playing with their puppets, I
cannot but flatter myself that their husbands and
children will be happy in the possession of such
wives and mothers. ADDISON.
Who can look at this exquisite little creature
seated on its cushion, and not acknowledge it*
CHILDREN.
99
prerogative of life that mysterious influence
which in spite of the stubborn understanding
masters the mind, sending it hack to days long
past, when care was hut a dream, and its most
serious business a childish frolic? But we no
longer think of childhood as the past, still less
as an abstraction; we see it embodied'before us,
in all its mirth, and fun, and glee, and the grave
man becomes again a child, to feel as a child,
and to follow the little enchanter through all its
wiles and never-ending labyrinth of pranks.
What can be real if that is not which so takes
us out of our present selves that the weight of
years falls from us as a garment ; that the fresh-
ness of life seems to begin anew ; and the heart
and the fancy, resuming their first joyous con-
sciousness, to launch again into this moving
world, as on a sunny sea whose pliant waves
yield to the touch, sparkling and buoyant, carry
them onward in their merry gambols? Where
all the purposes of reality are answered, if there
he no philosophy in admitting, we see no wisdom
in disputing it. ALLSTON.
If the affection or aptness of the children be
extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it.
LORD BACON.
Had it pleased God to continue to me the
hopes of succession, I should have been, accord-
ing to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the
age I live in, a sort of founder of a family : I
should have left a son, who, in all the points in
which personal merit can be viewed, in science,
in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in
generosity, in humanity, in every liberal senti-
ment and every liberal accomplishment, would
not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of
Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in
his line. His Grace very soon would have
wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that
provision which belonged more to mine than to
me. He would soon have supplied every defi-
ciency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It
would not have been for that successor to resort
to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in
me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a
salient, living spring of generous and manly
action. Every day he lived he would have re-
purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten
times more, if ten times more he had received.
He was made a public creature, and had no en-
joyment whatever but in the performance of
some duty. At this exigent moment the loss
of a finished man is not easily supplied.
But a Disposer whose power we are little able
to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not
at all to dispute, has ordained it in another man-
ner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might
suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over
me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which
the hurricane has scattered about me. I am
stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the
roots, and lie prostrate on the earth. There, and
prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the
Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it.
But, whilst I humble myself before God, I do
not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks
of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience
of Job is proverbial. After some of the con-
vul>ive struggles of our irritable nature, he sub-
mitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes.
But even so, I do not find him blamed for rep-
rehending, and with a considerable degree of
verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of
his who visited his dunghill to read moral, po-
litical, and economical lectures on his misery.
I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies
in the gate. BURKR :
Letter to a Noble Lord on the Att^':k<
upon his Pension, 1796.
Be ever gentle with the children God has
given you; watch over them constantly; reprove
them earnestly, but not in anger. In the for-
cible language of Scripture, " Be not bitter
against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I
once heard a kind father say; " I talk to them
very much, but do not like to beat my children
the world will beat them." It was a beauti-
ful thought, though not elegantly expressed.
Yes : there is not one child in the circle round
the table, healthful and happy as they look now,
on whose head, if long enough spared, the storm
will not beat. Adversity may wither them, sick-
ness may fade, a cold world may frown on them,
but amidst all let memory carry them back to a
home where the law of kindness reigned, where
the mother's reproving eye was moistened with
a tear, and the father frowned " more in sorrow
than in anger." ELIHU BURRITT.
Good Christian people ! here lies for you an
inestimable loan : take all heed thereof; in all
carefulness employ it : with high recompense,
or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be
required back. CARLYLE.
I love these little people; and it is not a slight
thing when they, who are so fresh from God.
love us. DICKENS.
It always grieves me to contemplate the in
itiation of children into the ways of life when
they are scarcely more than infants. It checks
their confidence and simplicity, two of the best
qualities that Heaven gives them, and demands
that they share our sorrows before they are ca-
pable of entering into our enjoyments.
DICKENS.
A child is a man in z small letter, yet the best
copy of Adam ; and he is happy whose small
practice in the world can only write his chaiac
ter. He is Nature's fresh picture newly drawn
in oil, which time and much handling dims and
defaces. His soul is yet a white paper, unscrib
bled with observations of the world, wherewith
at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He
is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor
hath made means by sin to be acquainted with
misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being
wise,, nor endures evils to come by foreseeing
them. He kisses and loves all, and when the
smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater.
Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and
entice him on with. a bit of sugar to a draught
100
CHILDREN.
of wormwood. He plays yet like a young pren-
tice the first day, and is not come to his task of
melancholy. All the language he speaks yet is
tears, and they serve him well enough to express
his necessity. His hardest labour is his tongue,
as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ ;
and he :'s best company with it when he can but
prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his
game is our earnest ; and his drums, rattles, and
hobby-horses, but the emblems and mockings
of men's business. His father hath writ him as
his own little story, wherein he reads those days
of his life which he cannot remember, and
sighs to see what innocence he has outlived.
He is the Christian's example, and the old man's
iclapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the
other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off
his body with his little coat, he had got eternity
without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven
for another. BISHOP EARLE.
Hang me all the thieves in Gibbet Street to-
morrow, and the place will be crammed with
fresh tenants in a week ; but catch me up the
young thieves from the gutter and the door-
steps; take Jonathan Wild from the breast;
send Mrs. Sheppard to Bridewell, but take hale
young Jack out of her arms ; teach and wash
me this young unkempt vicious colt, and he will
run for the Virtue Stakes yet; take the young
child, the little lamb, before the great Jack
Sheppard ruddles him and folds him for his
own black flock in Hades; give him some
soap, instead of whipping him for stealing a
cake of brown Windsor; teach htm the Gospel,
instead of sending him to the treadmill for
haunting chapels and purloining prayer-books
out of pews; put him in the way of filling shop-
.tills, instead of transporting him when he crawls
on his hands and knees to empty them ; let him
know that he has a body fit and made for some-
thing better than to be kicked, bruised, chained,
.pinched with hunger, clad in rags or prison
gray, or mangled with gaoler's cat; let him
know that he has a soul to be saved. In God's
na,me, take care of the children, somebody;
and there will soon be an oldest inhabitant in
Gibbet Street, and never a new one to succeed
him ! Household Words.
-Suppose, again, that a teacher is gentle-spirited
and, of a loving disposition ; the first soon dwin-
dles into a feeble non-resistance of injuries, and
the last hungers and thirsts often until it perishes
of inanition. I know it is a shocking thing to
Bay, but the children are mostly selfish : so long
as you are administering to their amusement or
comfort, they will love you, but the moment it
becomes necessary to thwart a whim or control
a passion, you are altogether hateful ; and they
hate you for the time being, very cordially. I
have been loved and hated myself a dozen times
a week ; and I know a little damsel now who,
when her temper is crossed, tells her governess
that -she hates her pet cat, and is not above
giving the innocent pussy a sly blow or kick as
piojty. for. its. much-enduring mistress.
Household Words.
Tell me not of the trim, precisely-arranged
homes where there are no children ; " where,"
as the good Germans have it, " the fly-traps
always hang straight on the wall ;" tell me not
of the never-disturbed nights and days, of the
tranquil, unanxious hearts, where children are
not ! I care not for these things. God sends
children for another purpose than merely to keep
up the race : to enlarge our hearts, to make us
unselfish, and full of kindly sympathies and affec-
tions ; to give our souls higher aims, and to call
out all our faculties to extended enterprise and
exertion ; to bring round our fireside bright faces
and happy smiles, and loving, tender hearts
My soul blesses the Great Father every day, that
he has gladdened the earth with little children.
MARY Ho WITT.
All minds, even the dullest, remember the
days of their childhood; but all cannot bring
back the indescribable brightness of that blessed
season. They who would know what they
once were, must not merely recollect, but they
must imagine, the hills and valleys if any such
there were in which their childhood played;
the torrents, the waterfalls, the lakes, the heather,
the rocks, the heaven's imperial dome, the raven
floating only a little lower than the eagle in the
sky. To imagine what he then heard and saw,
he must imagine his own nature. He must
collect from many vanished hours the power of
his untamed heart ; and he must, perhaps, trans-
fuse also something of his maturer mind into
those dreams of his former being, thus linking
the past with the present by a continuous chain,
which, though often invisible, is never broken.
So it is too with the calmer affections that have
grown within the shelter of a roof. We do not
merely remember, we imagine, our father's
house, the fireside, all his features, then most
living, now dead and buried, the very mannei
of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must
combine, with all the passionate and plastic
power of imagination, the spirit of a thousand
happy hours into one moment; and we must
invest with all that we ever felt to be venerable,
such an image as alone can fill our filial hearts.
It is thus that imagination, which first aided the
growth of all our holiest and happiest affections,
can preserve them to us unimpaired
" For she can bring us back the deaJ
Even in the loveliest looks they were."
WASHINGTON IRVING.
Young people who have been habitually
gratified in all their desires will not only more
indulge in capricious desires, but will infallibly
take it more amiss when the feelings or happiness
of others require that they should be thwarted,
than those who have been practically trained to
the habit of subduing and restraining them, and
consequently will, in general, sacrifice the hap-
piness of others to their own selfish indulgence.
To what else is the selfishness of princes and
other great people to be attributed ? It is in
vain to think of cultivating principles of gene-
rosity and beneficence by mere exhortation and
CHILDREN.
101
reasoning. Nothing hut the practic.il hahit of
overcoming >ur own selfishness, and of familiarly
encountering privations and discomfort on ac-
count of others, will ever enahle us to do it
when required. And therefore I am firmly
persuaded that indulgence infallibly produces
selfishness and hardness of heart, and that
nothing but a pretty severe discipline and con-
trol can lay the foundation of a magnanimous
character. LORD JEFFREY.
Yet it may be doubted whether the pleasure
of seeing children ripened into strength be not
overbalanced by the pain of seeing some fall in
the blossom, and others blasted in their growth ;
some shaken down by storms, some tainted with
cankers, and some shrivelled in the shade; and
whether he that extends his care beyond him-
self does not multiply his anxieties more than
his pleasures, and weary himself to no purpose,
by superintending what he cannot regulate.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 69.
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest
thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate
creatures which bear them ; but the prettier the
kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that
it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs
not much from another in glory; but a violet
should look and smell the daintiest.
C. LAMB.
It requires a critical nicety to find out the
genius or the propensions of a child.
L' ESTRANGE.
Children should always be heard, and fairly
and kindly answered, when they ask after any-
thing they would know, and desire to be in-
formed about. Curiosity should be as carefully
cherished in children as other appetites sup-
pressed. LOCKE.
Children are travellers newly arrived in a
strange country ; we should therefore make
conscience not to mislead them. LOCKE.
He that is about children should study their
nature and aptitudes : what turns they easily
take, and what becomes them ; what their
native stock is, and what it is fit for.
LOCKE.
If a child, when questioned for anything, di-
rectly confess, you must commend his ingenuity,
and pardon the fault, be it what it will.
LOCKE.
To keep him at a distance from falsehood,
and cunning, which has always a broad mixture
of falsehood, this is the fittest preparation of a
child for wisdom. LOCKE.
When one is sure it will not corrupt or effemi-
iiate children's minds, and make them fond of
trifles, I think all things should be contrived to
their satisfaction. LOCKE.
I am sure children would be freer from dis-
eases if they were not crammed so much as they
are by fond mothers, and were kept wholly from
flesh the first three years. LOCKE.
Silly people commend tame, unactive chil
dren, because they make no noise, nor give
them any trouble. LOCKE.
I would not have children much beaten fof
their faults, because I would not have them
think bodily pain the greatest punishment.
LOCKE.
If the mind be curbed and humbled too much
in children ; if their spirits be abused and broken
too much by too strict an hand over them ; they
lose all their vivacity and industry, LOCKE,
Children, even when they endeavour their
utmost, cannot keep their minds from straggling.
LOCKE.
If improvement cannot be made a recreation,
they must be let loose to the childish play they
fancy, which they should be weaned from by
being made surfeit of it. LOCKE.
The main thing to be considered in every
action of a child is how it will become him
when he is bigger, and whither it will lead him
when he is grown up. LOCKE.
Forcing the empty wits of children to com-
pose themes, verses, and orations. MlLTON.
To season them, and win them early to the
love of virtue and true labour, ere any flattering
seducement or vain principle seize them wander-
ing, some easy and delightful book of education
should be read to them. MlLTON.
A child's eyes ! those clear wells of undefined
thought; what on earth can be more beautiful!
Full of hope, love, and curiosity, they meet your
own. In prayer, how earnest; in joy, how
sparkling; in sympathy, how tender ! The man
who never tried the companionship of a little
child has carelessly passed by one of the great
pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower
without plucking it or knowing its value. A
child cannot understand you, you think: speak
to it of the holy things of your religion, of your
grief for the loss of a friend, of your love for
some one you fear will not love in return : it
will take, it is true, no measure or soundings of
your thought; it will not judge how much you
should believe ; whether your grief is rational
in proportion to your loss; whether you are
worthy or fit to attract the love which you seek ;
but its whole soul will incline to yours, and in-
graft itself, as it were, on the feeling which is
your feeling for the hour.
HON. MRS. NORTON.
I seem, for my own part, to see the benevo-
lence of the Deity more clearly in the pleasures
of very young children than in anything in the
world. PALEY.
Amongst the causes assigned for the continu-
ance and diffusion of the same moral sentiments
amongst mankind, may be mentioned imitation.
The efficacy of this principle is more observable
in children; indeed, if there be anything in
them which deserves the name of an instinct, \l
102
CHILDREN.
is their propensity to imitation. Now, there is
nothing which children imitate or apply more
readily than expressions of affection and aver-
sion, of approbation, hatred, resentment, and the
like; and when these passions and expressions
are once connected, which they soon will be by
the same association which unites words with
their ideas, the passion will follow the expres-
sion, and attach upon the object to which the
child has been accustomed to apply the epithet.
PA LEY.
Do not command children under six years of
age to keep anything secret, not even the pleas-
ure you inay be preparing as a surprise for a dear
friend. The cloudless heaven of youthful open-
heartedness should not be overcast, not even by
the rosy dawn of shyness, otherwise children
will soon learn to conceal their own secrets as
well as yours. RICHTER.
They who provide much wealth for their
children, but neglect to improve them in virtue,
do like those who feed their horses high, but
never train them to the manage. SOCRATES.
Some who have been corrupt in their morals
have yet been infinitely solicitous to have their
children piously brought up. SOUTH.
A house is never perfectly furnished for en-
joyment unless there is a child in it rising three
years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.
SOUTHEY.
Call not that man wretched who, whatever
ills he suffers, has a child to love.
SOUTHEY.
These slight intimations will give you to un-
derstand that there are numberless little crimes
which children take no notice of while they are
doing, which, upon reflection, when they shall
themselves become fathers, they will look upon
with the utmost sorrow "and contrition, that they
did not regard before those whom they offended
were to be no more seen. How many thou-
sand things do I remember which would have
highly pleased my father, and I omitted for no
other reason but that I thought what he pro-
posed the effect of humour and old age, which
I am now convinced had reason and good sense
in it ! I cannot now go into the parlour to him
and make his heart glad with an account of a
matter which was of no consequence, but that I
told it and acted in it. The good man and
woman are long since in their graves, who used
to sit and plot the welfare of us their children,
while, perhaps, we were sometimes laughing at
the old folks at *he other end of the house.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 263.
Fidelia, on her part, as 1 was going to say, as
accomplished as she is, with all her beauty, wit,
air, and mien, employs her whole time in care
and attendance upon her father. How have I
been charmed to see one of the most beauteous
women the age has produced, on her knees,
helping on an old man's slipper! Her filial
regard to him is what she makes her diversion,
her business, and her glory.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 449.
There is another accidental advantage in mar-
riage, which has likewise fallen to my share; I
mean the having a multitude of children. These
I cannot but regard as very great blessings.
When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice
in the additions which I have made f my
species, to my country, and to my religioi. in
having produced such a number of reasonable
creatures, citizens, and Christians. I am pleased
to see myself thus perpetuated.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 500.
All those instances of charity which usually
endear each other, sweetness of conversation,
affability, frequent admonition, all signification
of love, tenderness, care, and watchfulness,
must be expressed towards children.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Nothing seems to weigh down their buoyant
spirits long ; misfortune may fall to their lot,
but the shadows it casts upon their life-path are
fleeting as the clouds that come and go in an
April sky. Their future rnay, perchance, appear
dark to others, but to their fearless gaze it
looms up brilliant and beautiful as the walls of
a fairy palace. There is no tear which a
mother's gentle hand cannot wipe away, no
wound that a mother's kiss cannot heal, no
anguish which the sweet murmuring of her soft,
low voice cannot soothe. The warm, generous
impulses of their nature have not been fettered
and cramped by the cold formalities of the
world ; they have not yet learned to veil a hol-
low heart with false smiles, or hide the basest
purposes beneath honeyed words. Neither are
they constantly on the alert to search out our
faults and foibles with Argus eye : on the con-
trary, they exercise that blessed charity which
"thinketh no evil." TEGNER.
By frequent conversing with him, and scatter-
ing short apothegms, and little pleasant stories,
and making useful applications of them, his son
was in his infancy taught to abhor vanity and
vice as monsters. IZAAK WALTON:
Life of Sanderson.
In order to form the minds of children, the
first thing to be done is'/0 conquer their will.
To inform the understanding is a work of
time, and must, with children, proceed by slow
degrees, as they are able to bear it; but the sub-
jecting the will must be done at once, and the
sooner the better ; for, by neglecting timely cor-
rection, they will contract a stubbornness and
obstinacy which are hardly ever conquered, and
not without using such severity as would be as
painful to me as the child. In the esteem of
the world they pass for kind and indulgent,
whom I call cruel, parents, who permit theii
children to get habits which they know must
afterwards be broken. When the will of a child
is subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand
in awe of its parents, then a great many childish
follies and inadvertencies may be passed by.
Some should be overlooked, and others mildly
reproved ; but no wilful transgression ought to
be forgiven without such chastisement, less or
CHILDREN. CHRIS T.
103
more, as the nature and circumstances of the
offence may require. I insist upon conquering
the will of children betimes, because this is the
only strong and rational foundation of a religious
education, without which both precept and ex-
ample will be ineffectual. But when this is
thoroughly done, then a child is capable of
being governed by the reason and piety of its
parents till its own understanding comes, to
maturity, and the principles of religion have
taken root in the mind. MRS. S. WESLEY.
In books designed for children there are two
extremes that should be avoided. The one,
-that reference to religious principles in connec-
tion with matters too trifling and undignified,
arising from a well-intentioned zeal, causing a
forget fill ness of the maxim whose notorious
truth has made it proverbial, " Too much famil-
iarity breeds contempt." And the other is the
contrary, and still more prevailing, extreme,
arising from a desire to preserve a due reverence
for religion, at the expense of its useful applica-
tion in conduct. But a line may be drawn
which will keep clear of both extremes. We
should not exclude the association of things
sacred with whatever are to ourselves trifling
matters (for these little things are great to chil-
dren), but with whatever is viewed by them as
trifling. Everything is great or small in refer-
ence to the parties concerned. The private
concerns of any obscure individual are very
insignificant to the world at large, but they are
of great importance to himself; and all worldly
affairs must be small in the sight of the Most
High ; but irreverent familiarity is engendered
in the mind of any one, then, and then only,
when things sacred are associated with such as
sire, to him, insignificant things.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon'' 's ssaj>, Of Studies.
The influence exercised by such works is
overlooked by those who suppose that a child's
character, moral and intellectual, is formed by
those books only which are put into his hands
with that design. As hardly anything can acci-
dentally touch the soft clay without stamping its
mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest
a child without contributing in some degree,
though the book itself be afterwards totally for-
gotten, to form the character; and the parents,
therefore, who, merely requiring from him a
certain course of study, pay little or no attention
lo story-books, are educating him they know not
how. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacorfs Essay, Of Studies.
CHRIST.
But Silence never shows itself to so great an
advantage as when it is made the reply to
calumny and defamation, provided that we give
no just occasion for them. We might produce
an example of it in the behaviour of One, in
whom it appeared in all its majesty, and One
whose Silence, as well as his person, was alto-
gether divine. When one considers this subject
only in its sublimity, this great instance could
not but occur to me ; and since I only make use
of it to show the highest example of it, I hope
I do not offend in it. To forbear replying to an
unjust reproach, and overlook it with a generous,
or, if possible, with an entire neglect of it, is
one of the most heroic acts of a great mind;
and I must confess, when I reflect upon the
behaviour of some of the greatest men of an-
tiquity, I do not so much admire them that they
deserved the. praise of the whole age they lived
in, as because they contemned the envy and
detraction of it.
ADDISON : Toiler, No. 133.
What can be a stronger motive to a firm trust
and reliance on the mercies of our Maker than
the giving us his Son to suffer for us? What
can make us love and esteem even the most in-
considerable of mankind, more than the thought
that Christ died for him ? Or what dispose us
to set a stricter guard upon the purity of our own
hearts, than our being members of Christ, and
a part of the society of which that immaculate
person is the nead ? But these are only a speci-
men of those admirable enforcements of moral-
ity which the apostle has drawn from the history
of our blessed Saviour.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 186.
Being convinced upon all accounts that they
had the same reason to believe the history of our
Saviour as that of any other person to which
they themselves were not actually eye-witnesses,
they were bound, by all the rules of historical
faith and of right reason, to give credit to this
history. ADDISON.
When these learned men saw sickness and
frenzy cured, the dead" raised, the oracles put to
silence, the demons and evil spirits forced to
confess themselves no gods, by persons who only
made use of prayers and adjurations in the name
of their crucified Saviour, how could they doubt
of their Saviour's power on the like occasions ?
ADDISON : On the Christian Religion.
However consonant to reason his precepts
appeared, nothing could have tempted men to
acknowledge him as their God and Saviour but
their being firmly persuaded of the miracles he
wrought. ADDISON.
Who would not believe that our Saviour
healed the sick and raised the dead when it was
published by those who themselves often did the
same miracles? ADDISON.
Let a man's innocence be what it will, let his;
virtues rise to the highest pitch of perfection,
there will still be in him so many secret sins, so
many human frailties, so many offences of ig-
norance, passion, and prejudice, so many un-
guarded words and thoughts, that without the
advantage of such an expiation and atonement
as Christianity has revealed to us, it is impossi-
ble he should be saved. ADDISON.
I0 4
CHRIST.
We sometimes wish that it had been our lot
to live and converse with Christ, to hear his
divine discourses, and to observe his spotless
behaviour ; and we please ourselves with think-
ing how ready a reception we should have given
to him and his doctrine. ATTERBURY.
The resurrection is so convincingly attested
by such persons, with such circumstances, that
they who consider and weigh the testimony, at
what distance soever they are placed, cannot
entertain any more doubt of the resurrection
than the crucifixion of Jesus. ATTERBURY.
Our Saviour would love at no less rate than
death ; and from the supereminent height of
glory, stooped and debased himself to the suf-
ferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk
himself to the bottom of abjectedness, to exalt
our condition to the contrary extreme.
BOYLE.
He that condescended so far, and stooped so
low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not
refuse us a gracious reception there.
BOYLE.
You have the representatives of^that religion
which says that their God is love, that the very
vital spirit of their institution is charity, a re-
ligion which so much hates oppression, that,
when the God whom we adore appeared in hu-
man form, he did not appear in a form of great-
ness and majesty, but in sympathy with the
lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm
and ruling principle that their welfare was the
object of all government, since the Person who
Was the Master of Nature chose to appear him-
self in a subordinate situation.
BURKE:
Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
He prophesied of the success of his gospel ;
which after his death immediately took root, and
spread itself everywhere, maugre all opposition
or persecution. BURNET.
He walked in Judea eighteen hundred years
ago : his sphere melody, flowing in wild native
tones, took captive the ravished souls of men,
and being of a truth sphere melody, still flows
and sounds, though now with thousand-fold ac-
companiments and rich symphonies, through all
our hearts, and modulates and divinely leads
them. CARLYLE.
In like manner did the King eternal, im-
mortal, and invisible, surrounded as he is with
the splendours of a wide and everlasting mon-
archy, turn him to our humble habitation ; and
the footsteps of God manifest in the flesh have
been on the narrow spot of ground we occupy :
and small though our mansion be amid the orbs
and the systems of immensity, hither hath the
King of glory bent his mysterious way, and
entered the tabernacle of men, and in the dis-
guise of a servant did he sojourn for years un-
der the roof which canopies our obscure and
solitary world. DR. T. CHALMERS:
Discourses on Mod. Astron., Disc. IV.
Tacitus has actually attested the existence of
Jesus Christ ; the reality of such a personage ;
his public execution under the administration of
Pontius Pilate; the temporary check which this
gave to the progress of his religion ; its revival
a short time after his death ; its progress over
the land of Judea, and to Rome itself, the me-
tropolis of the empire ; all this we have in
Roman historian. DR. T. CHALMERS :
Evid. of Chris., chap. v.
For my own part, gentlemen, I have been
ever deeply devoted to the truths of Christianity ;
and my firm belief in the Holy Gospel is by no
means owing to the prejudices of education -
(though I was religiously educated by the best
of parents), but has arisen from the fullest and
most continued reflections of my riper years
and understanding. It forms at this moment
the great consolation of a life which as a shadow
passes away ; and without it I should consider
my long course of health and prosperity (too
long, perhaps, and too uninterrupted to be good
for any man) only as the dust which the wind
scatters, and rather as a snare than as a blessing.
LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE:
Speech in the Prosecution of Paine as au~
thor of The Age of Reason, 1794.
In the mystery of Christ's incarnation, who
was God as well as man, in the humiliation of
his life, and in his death upon the cross, we be-
hold the most stupendous instance of compas-
sion ; while at the same moment the law of God
received more honour than it could have done by
the obedience and death of any, or of all, his
creatures. In this dispensation of his grace he
has reached so far beyond our highest hopes
that, if we love him, we may be assured that he
will with it freely give us all things. Access to
God is now opened at all times, and from all
places; and to such as sincerely ask it he has
promised his Spirit to teach them to pray, and
to help their infirmities. The sacrifice of Christ
has rendered it just for him to forgive sin ; and
whenever we are led to repent of and to forsake
it, even the righteousness of God is declared in
the pardon of it. ROBERT HALL :
Excellency of the Christian Dispensation.
That he shall receive no benefit from Christ is
the affirmation whereon his despair is founded;
and one way of removing this dismal apprehen-
sion is, to convince him that Christ's death (if
he perform the condition required) shall cer-
tainly belong to him.
HAMMOND : Fundamentals.
All the decrees whereof Scripture treateth are
conditionate, receiving Christ as the gospel offers
him, as Lord and Saviour; the former, as well
as the letter, being the condition of Scripture
election, and the rejecting, or not receiving him
thus, the condition of the Scripture reprobation.
HAMMOND.
The end of his descent was to gather a church
of holy Christian livers over the whole world.
HAMMOND.
CHRIST.
If he sets industriously and sincerely to per-
form the commands of Christ, he can have no
ground of doubting but it shall prove successful
to him. HAMMOND.
By ascending, after that the sharpness of death
was overcome, he took the very local possession
of glory, and that to the use of all that are his,
even as himself before had witnessed, I go to
prepare a place for you. HOOKER.
In the beautiful character of the blessed Jesus
there was not a more striking feature than a
certain sensibility which disposed him to take
part in every one's affliction to which he was a
witness, and to be ready to afford it a miracu-
lous relief. He was apt to be particularly
touched by instances of domestic distress, in
which the suffering arises from those feelings of
friendship growing out of natural affection and
habitual endearment, which constitute the per-
fection of man as a social creature, and distin-
guish the society of the human kind from the
instinctive herdings of the lower animals.
BISHOP HORSLEY.
What man indeed that still retains, I will not
say the faith of a Christian, but the modesty of
a man of sense, must not feel that there is a
literally infinite interval between himself and
That Majestic One, Who, in the words of Jean
Paul Richter, being the Holiest among the
mighty, and the Mightiest among the holy, has
lifted with His pierced Hand empires off their
hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out
of its channel, and still governs the Ages?
LIDDON.
Christ will bring all to life, and then they
shall be put every one upon his own trial, and
receive judgment. LOCKE.
Logicians may reason about abstractions. But
the great mass of men must have images. The
strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and
nations to idolatry can be explained on no other
principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there
is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible
Deity. But the necessity of having something
more definite to adore produced, in a few cen-
turies, the innumerable crowds of Gods and
Goddesses. In like manner the ancient Per-
sians thought it impious to 'exhibit the Creator
under a human form. Yet even these trans-
ferred to the sun the worship which, in specula-
tion, they considered due only to the Supreme
Mind. The history of the Jews is the record
of a continued struggle between pure Theism,
supported by the most terrible sanctions, and
the strangely fascinating desire of having some
visible and tangible object of adoration. Per-
haps none of the secondary causes which Gib-
bon has assigned for the rapidity with which
Christianity spread over the world, while Juda-
ism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated
more powerfully than this feeling. God, the
uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible,
attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might
admire so noble a conception; but the crowd
turned away in disgust from words which pre-
sented no image to their minds. It was before
Deity embodied in a human form, walking
among men, partaking of their infirmities, lean-
ing on their bosoms, weeping over their graves,
slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cro>s,
that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the
doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the
Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the
swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the
dust.
LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.
The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose
blameless life malice could find no act to im-
peach, had been called in question for words
spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syl-
lable which would have made it clear that those
words were figurative, and had thus furnished
the Sanhedrim with a pretext under which the
foulest of all judicial murders had been perpe-
trated. LORD MACAULAY :
History of England, chap. v.
Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years
Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond
all others difficult to satisfy : He asks that for
which a philosopher may often seek in vain at
the hands of his friends, or a father of his chil-
dren, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his
brother : He asks for the human heart : He will
have it entirely to himself: He demands it un-
conditionally; and forthwith His demand is
granted. Wonderful ! In defiance of time and
space, the soul of man, with all its powers and
faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire
of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him
experience that remarkable supernatural love
towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccount-
able ; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's
creative power. Time, the great destroyer, is
powerless to extinguish this sacred flame : time
can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit
to its range. This it is which strikes me most.
I have often thought of it. This it is which
proves to me quite convincingly the Djvinity of
Jesus Christ. NAPOLEON I. :
Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 1 866.
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I my-
self, have founded great empires: but upon what
do these creations of our genius depend ? Upon
force. Jesus, alone, founded His empire upon
love, and to this very day millions would die
for Him. ... I think I understand something
of human nature; and I tell you, all these were
men ; and I am a man : none else is like Him 1
Jesus Christ was more than man.
NAPOLEON I. :
Liddon's Bampton Lectures, 1866.
The exceeding umbrageousness of this tree
he compareth to the dark and shadowed life of
man ; through which the sun of justice being
not able to pierce, we have all remained in the
shadow of death till it pleased Christ to climb
the tree of the cross for our enlightening and
redemption. SIR W. RALEIGH.
io6
CHRIST. CHRISTIANITY.
I will confess that the majesty of the Scrip-
tures strikes me with admiration, as the purity
of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all
their pomp of diction : how contemptible are
they, compared with the Scriptures ! Is it pos-
r '.ble that a book at once so simple and so sub-
.ime should be merely the work of man ? Is it
possible that the sacred personage whose name
it records should be himself a mere man?
What sweetness, what purity, in his manner !
What sublimity in his maxims ! What profound
wisdom in his discourses! Where is the man,
where the philosopher, who could so live and
so die without weakness and without ostenta-
tion ? If the life and death of Socrates were
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were
those of a God. J. J, ROUSSEAU.
The vast distance that sin hath put between
the offending creature and the offended Creator
required the help of some great umpire and
intercessor to open him a new way of access to
God; and this Christ did /or us as mediator.
SOUTH.
The arguments brought by Christ for the con-
firmation of his doctrine were in themselves
sufficient. SOUTH.
That spotless modesty of private and public
life, that generous spirit which all other Chris-
tians ought to labour after, should look in us as
if they were natural. SPRAT.
But however spirits of a superficial greatness
may disdain at first sight to do anything, but
from a noble impulse in themselves, without any
future regards in this or any other being ; upon
stricter inquiry they will find, to act worthily,
and expect to be rewarded only in another
world, is as heroic a pitch of virtue as human
nature can arrive at. If the tenor of our actions
have any other motive than the desire to be
pleasing in the eye of the Deity, it will neces-
sarily follow that we must be more than men,
if we are not too much exalted in prosperity
and depressed in adversity. But the Christian
world has a Leader j the contemplation of whose
life and sufferings must administer comfort in
affliction, while the sense of his power and
omnipotence must give them humiliation in
prosperity.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 356.
Christ gave us his spirit to enable us to suffer
injuries, and made that the parts of suffering
evils should be the matter of three or four
Christian graces, of patience, of fortitude, of
longanimity, and perseverance.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Our religion sets before us, not the example
of a stupid stoic who had by obstinate principles
hardened himself against all sense of pain be-
yond the common measures of humanity, but
an example of a man like ourselves, that had a
tender sense of the least suffering, and yet
patiently endured the greatest.
TlLLOTSON.
Are we proud and passionate, malicious and
revengeful ? Is this to be like-minded with
Christ, who was meek and lowly ?
TlLLOTSON.
A mediator is considered two ways, by nature
or by office, as the fathers distinguish. He is
a mediator by nature, as partaking of both
natures, divine and human; and mediator by
office, as transacting matters between God and
man. WATERLAND.
Perhaps there was nothing ever done in all
past ages, and which was not a public fact, so
well attested as the resurrection of Christ.
DR. I. WATTS.
CHRISTIANITY.
What can that man fear who takes care to
please a Being that is so able to crush all his
adversaries? A Being that can divert any mis-
fortune from befalling him, or turn any such
misfortune to his advantage ?
ADDISON: Guardian.
The great received articles of the Christian
religion have been so clearly proved, from the
authority of that divine revelation in which they
are delivered, that it is impossible for those who
have ears to hear, and eyes to see, not to be
convinced of them. But were it possible for
anything in the Christian faith to be erroneous,
I can find no ill consequences in adhering to it.
The great points of the incarnation and buffer-
ings of our Saviour produce naturally such
habits. of virtue in the mind of man, that, I say,
supposing it were possible for us to be mistaken
in them, the infidel himself must at least allow
that no other system of religion could so effec-
tually contribute to the heightening morality.
They give us great ideas of the dignity of human
nature, and of the love which the Supreme Being
bears to his creatures, and consequently engage
us in the highest acts of duty towards our Cre-
ator, our neighbour, and ourselves.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 186.
It can never be for the interest of a believer
to do me a mischief, because he is sure, upon
the balance of accounts, to find himself a loser
by it. ADDISON.
The pre-eminence of Christianity to any other
religious scheme which preceded it, appears
from this, that the most eminent among the
pagan philosophers disclaimed many of these
superstitious follies which are condemned by
revealed religion. ADDISON.
W.hen religion was woven into the civil gov-
ernment, and flourished under the protection of
the emperors, men's thoughts and discourses
were full of secular affairs; but in the three
first centuries of Christianity men who embraced
this religion had given up all their interests in
this world, and lived in a perpetual preparation
for the next. . ADDISON.
CHRISTIANITY.
107
It happened, very providentially, to the
honour of the Christian religion, that it did not
take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the
world, but at a time when arts and sciences
were at their height. ADDISON.
A few persons of an odious and despised
country could not have filled the world with be-
lievers, had they not shown undoubted creden-
tials from the divine person who sent them on
such a message. ADDISON.
Such arguments had an invincible force of
those Pagan philosophers who became Chris-
tians, as we find in most of their writings.
ADDISON.
Arnobius asserts that men of the finest parts
and learning, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians,
despising the sentiments they had once been
fond of, took up their rest in the Christian re-
ligion. ADDISON.
There was never law, or sect, or opinion, did
so much magnify goodness as the Christian re-
ligion doth. LORD BACON :
Essay XIII., Of Goodness, etc.
The countries of the Turk were once Chris-
tian, and members of the Church, and where
the golden candlesticks did stand ; though now
they be utterly alienated, and no Christian left.
LORD BACON.
No religion ever appeared in the world whose
natural tendency was so much directed to pro-
mote the peace and happiness of mankind. It
makes right reason a law in every possible defi-
nition of the word. And therefore, even sup-
posing it to have been purely a human invention,
it had been the most amiable and the most use-
ful invention that was ever imposed on mankind
for their good. LORD BOLINGBROKE.
But the introduction of Christianity, which,
under whatever form, always confers such in-
estimable benefits on mankind, soon made a
sensible change in these rude and fierce man-
ners. It is by no means impossible, that, for an
end so worthy, Providence on some occasions
might directly have interposed.
BURKE : Abridgment of Eng. History.
That the Christian religion cannot exist in
this country with such a fraternity will not, I
think, be disputed with me. On that religion,
according to our mode, all our laws and institu-
tions stand, as upon their base. That scheme is
supposed in every transaction of life; and if that
were done away, everything else, as in France,
must be changed along with it. Thus, religion
perishing, and with it this Constitution, it is a
matter of endless meditation what order of things
would follow it. BURKE.
What was it to the Pharaohs of Egypt of
that old era, if Jethro the Midianite priest and
grazier accepted the Hebrew outlaw as his herds-
man ? Yet the Pharaohs, with all their chariots
of war, are buried deep in the wrecks of time;
>nd that Moses still lives, not among his own
tribe only, but in the hearts and daily business
of all civilized nations. Or figure Mahomet in
his youthful years " travelling to the horse-fairs
of Syria." Nay, to take an infinitely higher
instance: who has ever forgotten those lines of
Tacitus ; inserted as a small transitory altogether
trifling circumstance in the history of such a
potentate as Nero ? To us it is the most earnest
and strongly significant passage that we know
to exist in writing: '"Ergo abolendo rumori,
Nero subdidit reos, et quoesitissimis poenis affe-
cit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos
appellabat. Auctor nominis ejus CHRISTUS, qui,
Tiberio imperitante, per Procuratorem Pentium
Pilatum supplicio aftectus erat. Repressaque in
praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat,
non modo per Judseam originem ejus mali, sed
per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut
pudenda confluunt celebranturque-.' So for the
quieting of this rumour [of his having set fire to
Rome], Nero judicially charged with the crime
and punished with the most studied severities
that class hated for their general wickedness
whom the vulgar call Christians. The origina-
tor of that name was one CHRIST, who in the
reign of Tiberius suffered death by the sentence
of the Procurator Pontius Pilate. The baneful
superstition, thereby suppressed for the time,
again broke out not only over Judea, the native
soil of that mischief, but in the City also, where
from every side all atrocious and abominable
things collect and flourish." Tacitus was the
wisest, most penetrating man of his generation ;
and to such depth, and no deeper, has he seen
into this transaction, the most important that has
occurred or can occur in the annals of mankind.
CARLYLE.
Had it been published by a voice from heaven,
that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and
creeks, without any help of learning, should
conquer the world to the cross, it might have
been thought an illusion against all the reason
of men ; yet we know it was undertaken ana
accomplished by them. They published this
doctrine in Jerusalem, and quickly -spread it
over the greatest part of the world. Folly out-
witted wisdom, and weakness overpowered
strength. The conquest of the East by Alex-
ander was not so admirable as the enterprise of
these poor men. CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Christianity, which is always true to the heart,
knows no abstract virtues, but virtues resulting
from our wants, and useful to all.
CHATEAUBRIAND.
I have known what the enjoyments and ad-
vantages of this life are, and what the more
refined pleasures which learning and intellectual
power can bestow; and with all the experience
that more than threescore years can give, I, now
on the eve of my departure, declare to you (and
earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and
act on the conviction) that health is a great
blessing, competence obtained by honourable
industry a great blessing and a great blessing
it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends
io8
CHRISTIANITY.
and relatives; but that the greatest of all bless-
ings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges,
is to be indeed a Christian. COLERIDGE.
Far beyond all other political powers of Chris-
tianity is the demiurgic power of this religion
over the kingdoms of human opinion.
DE QUINCEY.
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all
its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy and the
divine source of its claims.
DE TOCQUEVILLE.
The mysterious incarnation of our blessed
Saviour . . . Milton made the grand conclusion
of Paradise Lost, the zest of his finished la-
bours, and the ultimate hope, expectation, and
glory of the world. Thus you find all that is
great or wise or splendid or illustrious among
created beings, all the minds gifted beyond or-
dinary nature, if not inspired by their universal
Author for the advancement and dignity of the
world, though divided by distant ages and by
clashing opinions, yet joining as it were in one
sublime chorus to celebrate the truths of Chris-
tianity, and laying upon its holy altars the never-
fading offerings of their immortal wisdom.
LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE :
Speech on Paine' s Age of Reason.
The universal dispersion of the Jews through-
out the world, their unexampled sufferings, and
their wondrous preservation, would be sufficient
to establish the truth of the Scriptures, if all
other testimony were sunk to the bottom of the
sea. LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE.
What other science can even make a preten-
sion to dethrone oppression, to abolish slavery,
to exclude war, to extirpate fraud, to banish vio-
lence, to revive the withered blossoms of para-
dise? Such are the pretensions and blessings
of genuine Christianity ; and wherever genuine
Christianity prevails, they are experienced. Thus
it accomplishes its promises on earth, where
alone it has enemies : it will therefore accom-
plish them in heaven, where its friends reign.
OLINTHUS GREGORY:
Letters on the Christian Religion.
Now you say, alas ! Christianity is hard : I
grant it; but gainful and happy. I contemn
the difficulty when I respect the advantage.
The greatest labours that have answerable re-
quitals are less than the least that have no re-
ward. Believe me, when I look to the reward
I would not have the work easier. It is a good
Master whom we serve, who not only pays, but
gives ; not only after the proportion of our earn-
ings, but of His own mercy.
BISHOP J. HALL.
Christianity, issuing perfect and entire from
the hands of its Author, will admit of no muti-
lations nor improvements ; it stands most secure
on its own basis ; and without being indebted to
foreign aids, supports itself best by its own in-
ternal vigour. When, under the pretence of
simplifying it, we attempt to force it into a closer
alliance with the most approved systems of phi-
losophy, we are sure to contract its bounds, and
to diminish its force and authority over the con-
sciences of men. It is dogmatic; not capable
of being advanced with the progress of science,
but fixed and immutable.
ROBERT HALL:
Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis.
Whoever will compare the late defences of
Christianity by Locke, Butler, or Clarke with
those of the ancient apologists, will discern in the
former far more precision and an abler method
of reasoning than in the latter ; which must be
attributed chiefly to the superior spirit of inquiry
by which modern times are distinguished. What-
ever alarm then may have been taken at the
liberty of discussion, religion it is plain hath
been a gainer by it; its abuses corrected, and its
divine authority settled on a firmer basis than
ever. ROBERT HALL:
On the Right of Pidlic Discussion.
The prime act and evidence of the Christian
hope is to set industriously and piously to the
performance of that condition on which the
promise is made. HAMMOND.
Her coming [Christianity] found the heathen
world without a single house of mercy. Search
the Byzantine Chronicles and the pages of Pub-
lius Victor; and though the one describes all
the public edifices of ancient Constantinople,
and the other of ancient Rome, not a word is
to be found in either of a charitable institution.
Search the ancient marbles in your museums ;
descend and ransack thegravesof Herculaneum
and Pompeii ; and question the many travellers
who have visited the ruined cities of Greece and
Rome ; and see, if amid all the splendid re-
mains of statues and amphitheatres, baths and
granaries, temples, aqueducts 1 and palaces, mau-
soleums, columns and triumphal arches, a single
fragment or inscription can be found telling us
that it belonged to a refuge for human want or
for the alleviation of human misery.
DR. JOHN HARRIS :
Great Commission.
There are two kinds of Christian righteous-
ness ; the one without us, which we have by
imputation ; the other in us, which consisteth
of faith, hope, and charity, and other Christian
virtues. HOOKER.
Christianity did not come from heaven to be
the amusement of an idle hour, to be the fcod
of mere imagination ; to be as a very lovely
song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and
playeth well upon an instrument. No : it is in*
tended to be the guide, the guardian, the com-
panion of all hours ; it is intended to be the
food of our immortal spirits ; it is intended to
be the serious occupation of our whole exist-
ence. BISHOP JEBB.
The miracles which prove the Christian re-
ligion are attested by men who have no interest
in deceiving us. . . . When we take the proph-
ecies which have been so exactly fulfilled, we
1 ave most satisfactory evidence.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Croker's Boswell, ch. xvi.
CHRISTIANITY.
109
As ti > the Christian religion, besides the strong
evidence which we have for it, there is a bal-
ance in its favour from the number of great men
who have been convinced of its truth after a se-
rious consideration of the question. Grotius was
an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to ex-
amine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius
was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who
certainly had no bias on the side of religion. Sir
Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be
a very firm believer. DR. S. JOHNSON.
The influence of Christianity has been very
efficient toward the introduction of a better and
more enlightened sense of right and justice
among the several governments of Europe. It
taught the duty of benevolence to strangers, of
humanity to the vanquished, of the obligation
of good faith, of the sin of murder, revenge,
and rapacity. The history of Europe during
the earlier periods of modern history abounds
with interesting and strong cases to show the
authority of the Church over turbulent princes
and fierce warriors, and the effect of that author-
ity in meliorating manners, checking violence,
and introducing a system of morals which in-
culcated peace, moderation, and justice.
CHANCELLOR KENT:
Commentaries on Amer. Law, i. 9.
I hope it is no derogation to the Christian re-
ligion to say that ... all that is necessary to be
believed in it by all men is easy to be under-
stood by all men. LOCKE.
Ours is a religion jealous in its demands, but
how infinitely prodigal in its gifts ! It troubles
you for an hour, it repays you by immortality.
LORD E. G. E. L. B. LYTTON.
The " greatest happiness principle" of Mr.
Bentham is included in the Christian morality,
and, to our thinking, it is there exhibited in an
infinitely more sound and philosophical form
than in the Utilitarian speculations. For in the
New Testament it is neither an identical propo-
sition nor a contradiction in terms; and, as laid
down by Mr. Bentham, it must be either the
one or the other. " Do as you would be done
by: Love your neighbour as yourself:" these
are the precepts of Jesus Christ. Understood in
an enlarged sense, these precepts are, in fact, a
direction to every man to promote the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. But this di-
rection would be utterly unmeaning, as it act-
ually is in Mr. Bentham's philosophy, unless it
were accompanied by a sanction. In the Chris-
tian scheme, accordingly, it is accompanied by
a sanction of immense force. To a man whose
greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent
Mith the greatest happiness of the greatest num-
ber is held out the prospect of an infinite hap-
piness hereafter, from which he excludes himself
by wronging his fellow-creatures here.
LORD MACAULAY :
Westminster Review's Defence of Mill,
June, 1829.
The real security of Christianity is to be found
in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adap-
tation to the human heart, in the facility with
which its scheme accommodates itself to the
capacity of every human intellect, in the con-
solation which it bears to the house of mourn-
ing, in the light with which it brightens the
great mystery of the grave. To such a system
it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength,
that it is part and parcel of the common law. It
is not now for the first time left to rely on the
force of its own evidences and the attractions
of its own beauty. Its sublime theology con-
founded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict
of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest
of the Caesars found their arms and their policy
unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that
were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not
of this world. The victory which Porphyry and
Diocletian failed to gain is not, to all appear-
ance, reserved for any of those who have, in
this age, directed their attacks against the last
restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of
the wretched. The whole history of Christianity
shows that she is in far greater danger of being
corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being
crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust
temporal sovereignty upon her treat her as their
prototypes treated her author. They bow the
knee, and spit upon her; they cry " Hail !" and
smite her on the cheek ; they put a sceptre in
her hand, but it is a fragile reed ; they crown
her, but it is with thorns ; they cover with pur-
ple the wounds which their own hands have in-
flicted on her; and inscribe magnificent letters
over the cross on which they have fixed her to
perish in ignominy and pain.
LORD MACAULAY:
Southey's Colloquies on Society, Jan. 1830.
One single expression which Mr. Sadler em-
ploys on this subject is sufficient to show how
utterly incompetent he is, to discuss it. " On
the Christian hypothesis," says he, " no doubt
exists as to the origin of evil." He does not,
we think, understand what is meartt by the
origin of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess
to give no solution of the mystery. They relate
facts ; but they leave the metaphysical question
undetermined. They tell us that man fell ; but
why he was not so constituted as to be incapable
of falling, or why the Supreme Being has not
mitigated the consequences of the Fall more
than they actually have beeti mitigated, the
Scriptures did not tell us, and, it may without
presumption be said, could not tell us, unless
we had been creatures different from what we
are. There is something, either in the nature
of our faculties or in the nature of the machinery
employed by us for the purpose of reasoning,
which condemns us on this and similar subjects
to hopeless ignorance. Man can understand
these nigh matters only by ceasing to be man,
just as a fly can understand a lemma of Newton
only by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an
objection to the Christian system that it gives us
no solution of these difficulties is to make it an
no
CHRISTIANITY.
objection to the Christian system that it is a
system formed for human beings. Of the puz-
zles of the Academy there is not one which does
not apply as strongly to Deism as to Christianity,
and to Atheism as to Deism. There are diffi-
culties in everything. Yet we are sure that
something must be true.
LORD MACAULAY:
Sadler's Refutation Refuted,^. 1831.
Sir, in supporting the motion of my honour-
able friend, I am, I firmly believe, supporting
the honour and the interests of the Christian
religion. I should think that I insulted that
religion if I said that it cannot stand unaided
by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was
established, and without such laws it may be
maintained. It triumphed over the superstitions
of the most refined and of the most savage
nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece
and the bloody idolatry of the Northern forests.
It prevailed over the power and policy of the
Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by
whom that empire was overthrown. But all
these victories were gained not by the help of
intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of
intolerance. The whole history of Christianity
proves that she has indeed little to fear from
persecution as a foe, but much to fear from per-
secution as an ally. May she long continue to
bless our country with her benignant influence,
strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her
spotless morality, strong in those internal and
external evidences to which the most powerful
and comprehensive of human intellects have
yielded assent, the last solace of those who have
outlived every earthly hope, the last restraint of
those who are raised above every earthly fear !
But let us not, mistaking her character and her
interests, fight the battle of truth with the weap-
ons of error, and endeavour to support by op-
pression that religion which first taught the
human race the great-lesson of universal charity.
LORD MACAULAY :
Speech in House of Commons, April 17,
1833, On Jewish Disabilities.
We led them [the people of India] to believe
that we attached no importance to the difference
between Christianity and heathenism. Yet how
vast that difference is ! I altogether abstain from
alluding to topics which belong to divines. I
speak merely as a politician anxious for the
morality and the temporal well-being of society.
And, so speaking, I say that to countenance the
Brahminical idolatry, and to discountenance that
religion which has done so much to promote
justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and
sciences, and good government, and domestic
happiness, which has struck off the chains of
the slave, which has mitigated the horrors of
war, which has raised women from servants and
playthings n*o companions and friends, is to
commit hign treason against humanity and civil-
ization. LORD MACAULAY :
Speech in I*ouse of Commons, March 9,
1843, On 'he Gates of Somnauth,
Rome must be imagined in the vastness and
uniformity of its social condition, the mingling
and confusion of races, languages, conditions,
in order to conceive the slow, imperceptible, yet
continuous progress of Christianity. Amid the
affairs of the universal empire, the perpetual
revolutions which were constantly calling up
new dynasties, or new masters over the world,
the pomp and state of the imperial palace, the
commerce, the business flowing in from all parts
of the world, the bustle of the Basilicas or
courts of law, the ordinary religious ceremonies,
or the more splendid rites on signal occasions,
which still went on, if with diminishing con-
course of worshippers, with their old sumptu-
ousness, magnificence, and frequency, the public
games, the theatres, the gladiatorial shows, the
Lucullan or Apician banquets, Christianity was
gradually withdrawing from the heterogeneous
mass some of all orders, even slaves, out of the
vices, the ignorance, the misery, of that cor-
rupted social system. It was instilling human-
ity, yet unknown, or coldly commended by an
impotent philosophy, among men and women
whose infant ears had been habituated to the
shrieks of dying gladiators ; it was giving dig-
nity to minds prostrated by years, almost cen-
turies, of degrading despotism; it was nurturing
purity and modesty of manners in an unspeak-
able state of deprivation ; it was enshrining the
marriage-bed in a sanctity long almost entirely
lost, and rekindling to a steady warmth the
domestic affections; it was substituting a simple,
calm, and rational faith and worship for the
worn-out superstitions of heathenism ; gently
establishing in the soul of man the sense of
immortality till it became a natural and inex-
tinguishable part of his moral being.
MlLMAN: Latin Christianity, i. 26.
He that can apprehend and consider vice
with all her baits and seeming. pleasures, and
yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer
that which is truly better, he is the true way
faring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and
cloistered virtue unexercised, and unbreathed,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary,
but slinks out of the race where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without dust and
heat. MILTON.
Christianity bears all the marks of a divine
original : it came down from heaven, and its
gracious purpose is to carry us up thither. Its
author is God ; it was foretold by the beginning
from prophecies, which grew clearer and brighter
as they approached the period of their accom-
plishment. It was confirmed by miracles, which
continued till the religion they illustrated was
established. It was ratified by the blood of its
author; its doctrines are pure, sublime, consist-
ent; its precepts just and holy; its worship is
spiritual; its service reasonable, and rendered
practicable by the offers of divine aid to human
weakness. It is sanctioned by the promise of
eternal happiness to the faithful, and the threat
of everlasting misery to the disobedient. It had
no collusion with power, for power sought to
CHRISTIANITY.
in
crush it ; it could not he in any league with the
world, for it set out by declaring itself the enemy
of the world ; it reprobated its maxims, it showed
the vanity of its glories, the danger of its riches,
the emptiness of its pleasures. This religion
does not consist in external conformity to prac-
tices which, though right in themselves, may be
adopted from human motives, and to answer
secular purposes; it is not a religion of forms,
and modes, and decencies; it is being trans-
formed into the image of God ; it is being like-
minded with Christ; it is considering Him as
our sanctification, as well as our redemption ; it
is endeavouring to live to Him here, that we
may live with Him hereafter.
HANNAH MORE.
The propagation of Christianity, in the man-
ner and under the circumstances in which it was
propagated, is an unique in the history of the
species. PALEY.
Lactantius also argues in defence of the relig-
ion from the consistency, simplicity, disinterest-
edness and sufferings of the Christian historians.
PALEY.
We live in the midst of blessings till we are
utterly insensible of their greatness, and of the
source from whence they flow. We speak of
our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws,
and forget entirely how large a share is due to
Christianity. Blot Christianity out of the pages
of man's history, and what would his laws have
been? what his civilization? Christianity is
mixed up with our very being and our daiiy life :
there is not a familiar object around us which
does not wear a different aspect because the
light of Christian love is on it; not a law which
does not owe its truth and gentleness to Chris-
tianity ; not a custom which cannot be traced in
all its holy, healthful parts to the Gospel.
JUDGE SIR J. A. PARK.
Christianity forbids no necessary occupations,
no reasonable indulgences, no innocent relax-
ations. It allows us to use the world, provided
we do not abuse it. It does not spread before
us a delicious banquet, and then come with a
" touch not, taste not, handle not." All it
requires is, that our liberty degenerate not into
licentiousness, our amusements into dissipation,
our industry into incessant toil, our carefulness
into extreme anxiety and endless solicitude. So
far from forbidding us to engage in business, it
expressly commands us not to be slothful in it,
and to labour with our hands for the things that
be needful ; it enjoins every one to abide in the
calling wherein he was called, and perform all
the duties of it. It even stigmatizes those that
provide not for their own, with telling them that
they are worse than infidels. When it requires
us to "be temperate in all things," it plainly
tells us that we may use all things temperately;
when it directs us to "make our moderation
known unto all men," this evidently implies
that, within the bounds of moderation, we may
enjoy all the reasonable conveniences and com-
forts of the present life.
BISHOP P JRTEUS.
If all were perfect Christians, individuals
would do their duty; the people would be obe-
dient to the laws; the magistrates incorrupt;
and there would be neither vanity nor luxury in
such a state. J. J. ROUSSEAU.
Christianity teaches nothing but what is per-
fectly suitable to and coincident with the ruling
principle of a virtuous and well-inclined man.
SOUTH.
Our religion is a religion that dares to b
understood ; that offers itself to the search of
the inquisitive, to the inspection of the severest
and the most awakened reason; for, beirf
secure of her substantial truth and purity, she
knows that for her to be seen And looked into
is to be embraced and admired ; as there needs
no greater argument for men to love the light
than to see it. SOUTH.
The Christian religion is the only means that
God has sanctified to set fallen man upon his
legs again, to clarify his reason, and to rectify
his will. . SOUTH.
Though it be not against strict justice for a
man to do those things which he might other-
wise lawfully do, albeit his neighbour doth take
occasion from thence to conceive in his mind a
false belief, yet Christian charity will, in many
cases, restrain a man. SOUTH.
They might justly wonder that men so taught,
so obliged to be kind to all, should behave
themselves so contrary to such heavehly instruc-
tions, such indissoluble obligations.
SOUTH.
It is owing to the forbidding and unlovely
constraint with which men of low conceptions
act when they think they conform themselves to
religion, as well as to the more odious conduct
of hypocrites, that the word Christian does not
carry with it at first view all that is great, worthy,
friendly, generous, and heroic. The man who
suspends his hopes of the reward of worthy
actions till after death, who can bestow unseen,
who can overlook hatred, do good to'his slan-
derer, who can never be angry at his friend,
never revengeful to his enemy, is certainly
formed for the benefit of society. Yet these are
so far from heroic virtues, that they are but the
ordinary duties of a Christian.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 356.
If Christianity were once abolished, how
could the free thinkers, the strong reasoners,
and the men of profound learning, be able to
find another subject so calculated, in all points,
whereon to display their abilities? What won-
derful productions of wit should we be deprived
of from those whose genius, by continual prac
tice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery ard
invectives against religion, and would therefore
never be able to shine or distinguish themselves
upon any other subject! We are daily com-
plaining of the great decline of wit an ong us,
and would take away the greatest, perhaps the
only topic we have left. . . . For had an him-
112
CHRISTIANITY.
dred such pens as these been employed on the
side of religion, they would have immediately
sunk into silence and oblivion. SwiFT:
Argument against Abolishing Christianity.
He is a good man who grieves rather for him
that injures him than for his own suffering; who
prays for him who wrongs him, forgiving all
bis faults; who sooner shows mercy than anger;
who offers violence to his appetite in all things;
endeavouring to subdue the flesh to. the spirit.
This is an excellent abbreviature of the whole
duty of a Christian.
JEREMY TAYLOR : Guide to Devotion.
Christianity came into the world with the
greatest simplicity of thought and language, as
well as life and manners, holding forth nothing
but piety, charity, and humility, with the belief
of the Messiah and of his kingdom.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
In the first ages of Christianity not only the
learned and the wise, but the ignorant and illit-
erate, embraced torments and death.
TlLLOTSON.
I have represented to you the excellency of
the Christian religion in respect of its clear dis-
coveries of the nature of God, and in respect
of the perfection of its laws.
TlLLOTSON.
What laws can be advised more proper and
effectual to advance the nature of man to its
highest perfection than these precepts of Chris-
tianity ? TlLLOTSON.
Christianity hath hardly imposed any other
laws upon us but what are enacted in our
natures or are agreeable to the prime and fun-
damental laws of it. TlLLOTSON.
By this law of loving even our enemies the
Christian religion discovers itself to be the most
generous and best-natured institution that ever
was in the world. TlLLOTSON.
No religion that ever was so fully represents
the goodness of God and his tender love to
mankind, which is the more powerful argument
to the love of God. TILLOTSON.
The Christian religion gives us a more lovely
character of God than any religion ever did.
TlLLOTSON.
Christianity secures both the private interests
of men and the public peace, enforcing all
justice and equity. TILLOTSON.
Do we not all profess to be of this excellent
religion ? but who will believe that we do so,
that shall look upon the actions and consider
the lives of the greatest part of Christians?
TILLOTSON.
Christianity is lost among them in the trap-
pings and accoutrements of it, with which, in-
stead of adorning religion, they have strangely
disguised it, and quite stifled it in the crowd of
external rites and ceremonies.
TILLOTSON.
The pure and benign light of revelation has
had a meliorating influence on mankind.
WASHINGTON.
It is the peculiar nature of the inestimable
treasure of Christian truth and religious knowl-
edge, that the more it is withheld from people,
the less they wish for it ; and the more is be-
stowed upon them, the more they hunger and
thirst after it. If people are kept upon a short
allowance of food, they are eager to obtain it;
if you keep a man thirsty, he will become the
more and more thirsty ; if he is poor, he is ex-
ceedingly anxious to become rich ; but if he is
left in a state of spiritual destitution, he will,
and still more his children, cease to feel it, and
cease to care about it. It is the last want men
can be trusted (in the first instance) to supply
for themselves. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacorfs Essay, Of Plantations.
Christianity cannot be improved, but men's
views and estimates and comprehension of
Christianity may be indefinitely improved.
WHATELY.
To believe in Christianity, without knowing
why we believe it, is not Christian faith, but
blind credulity. WHATELY.
The main distinction between real Christianity
and the system of the bulk of nominal Christians
chiefly consists in the different place which is
assigned in the two schemes to the peculiar doc-
trines of the Gospel. These, in the scheme of
nominal Christians, if admitted at all, appear
but like the stars of the firmament to the ordi-
nary eye. Those splendid luminaries draw forth,
perhaps, occasionally a transient expression of
admiration when we behold their beauty, or
hear of their distances, magnitudes, or proper-
ties; now and then, too, we are led, perhaps, to
muse upon their possible uses; but, however
curious as subjects of speculation, it must, after
all, be confessed they twinkle to the common
observer with a vain and idle lustre; and except
in the dreams of the astrologer have no influence
on human happiness, or any concern with the
course and order of the world. But to the reat
Christian, on the contrary, these peculiar doc-
trines constitute the centre to which he gravitates !
the very sun of his system ! the origin of all that
is excellent and lovely ! the source of light, and
life, and motion, and genial 'warmth, and plastic
energy ! Dim is the light of reason, and cold
and comfortless our state while left to her un-
assisted guidance. Even the Old Testament it-
self, though a revelation from Heaven, shines
but with feeble and scanty rays. But the blessed
truths of the Gospel are now unveiled to our
eyes, and we are called upon to behold and to
enjoy " the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God, in the face of Jesus Christ," in the full
radiance of its meridian splendour. The words
of inspiration best express our highly-favoured
state : " We all, with open face, beholding as in
a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into
the same imrtge, from glory to glory, even as by
the Spirit of the Lord." ' WILBERFORCE.
CHRISTIANITY. CHUR CH.
Since the revelation of Christianity all moral
thought has been sanctified by religion. Religion
has given to it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity
which ever, amongst the noblest of the heathen
we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that
shone by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates
anl Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the li&ht,"
has descended over many lands into the " huts
where poor men lie;" and thoughts are familiar
there, beneath the low and smoking roofs, higher
far than ever flowed from Grecian sage medita-
ting among the magnificence of his pillared
temples. PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON:
Recreations of Christopher North.
There are two considerations upon which my
faith in Christ is built as upon a rock : the fall
of man, the redemption of man, and the resur-
rection of man, the three cardinal doctrines of
our religion, are such as human ingenuity could
never have invented; therefore they must be
divine. The other argument is this : If the
prophecies have been fulfilled (of which there
is abundant demonstration), the Scripture must
he the Word of God; and if the Scripture is
the Word of God, Christianity must be true.
DR. EDWARD YOUNG, THE POET :
Cowper to Lady Heskcth, July 12, 1765.
CHURCH.
A discreet use of becoming ceremonies ren-
ders the service of the church solemn and affect-
ing, inspirits the sluggish, and inflames even the
devout worshipper. ATTERBURY.
If we would drive out the demon of fanati-
cism from the people, we must begin by exor-
cising the spirit of Epicureanism from the higher
ranks, and restore to their teachers the true
Christian enthusiasm, the vivifying influences of
the altar, the censer, and the sacrifice.
COLERIDGE.
In every grand or main public duty which
God requireth of his church, there is, besides
that matter and form wherein the essence thereof
consisteth, a certain outward fashion, whereby
the same is in decent manner administered.
HOOKER.
The service of God in the solemn assembly of
the saints is a work, though easy, yet withal very
weighty, and of great respect. HOOKER.
Then are the public duties of religion best
ordered when the militant church doth resemble
by sensible means that hidden dignity and glory
wherewith the church triumphant in heaven is
beautified. HOOKER.
Churches have names ; some as memorials of
peace, some of wisdom, some in memory of the
Trinity itself, some of Christ under sundry
titles; of the blessed Virgin not a few; many
of one apostle, saint, or martyr; many of all.
HOOKL*.
8
Antiquity, custom, and consent, in the church
of God, making with that which law doth estab-
lish, are themselves most sufficient reasons to
uphold the same, unless some notable public in-
convenience enforce the contrary.
HOOKER.
That which should make for them must prove
that men ought not to make laws for church reg-
iment, but only keep those laws which in Scrip-
ture they find made. HOOKER.
Christ could not suffer that the temple should
serve for a place of mart, nor the apostle of
Christ that the church should be made an inn.
HOOKER.
Manifest it is, that the very majesty and holi-
ness of the place where God is worshipped hath,
in regard to us, great virtue, force, and efficacy;
for that it serveth as a sensible help to stir up
devotion. HOOKER.
When neither the evidence of any law divine,
nor the strength of any invincible argument
otherwise found out by the law of reason, nor
any notable public inconvenience, doth make
against that which our own laws ecclesiastical
have instituted for the ordering of these affairs,
the very authority of the church itself sufficeth.
HOOKER.
It is no more disgrace to Scripture to have left
things free to be ordered by the church, than for
Nature to have left it to the wit of man to de-
vise his own attire. HOOKER.
Everywhere throughout all generations and
ages of the Christian world no church ever per-
ceived the Word of God to be against it.
HOOKER.
The church has many times been compared
by divines to the ark of which we read in the
book of Genesis ; but never was the resemblance
more perfect than during that evil time when she
rode alone, amidst darkness and tempest, on the
deluge beneath which all the great works of
ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bear-
ing within her that feeble germ from which a
second and more glorious civilization was to
spring. LORD MACAULAY :
History of England.
We do not see that while we still affect, by all
means, a rigid external formality, we may as
soon fall again into a gross conforming stupidity,
a stark and dead congealment of " wood, hay,
and stubble," forced and frozen together; which
is more to the sudden degenerating of a church
than many subdichotomies of petty schisms.
MILTON.
What means the service of the church so im-
perfectly and by halves read over ? What makes
them mince and mangle that in their practice
which they could swallow whole in their sub-
scriptions ? SOUTH.
After this time came on the midnight of the
church, wherein the very names of the councils
were forgotten, and men did only dream of
what was past. STILLINGFLEET.
CHURCH AND STATE.
CHURCH AND STATE.
The consecration of the state by a state re-
ligious establishment is necessary also to operate
with a wholesome awe upon free citizens; be-
cause, in order to secure their freedom, they
must enjoy some determinate portion of power.
To them, therefore, a religion connected with
the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes
even more necessary than in such societies
\vhere the people, by the terms of their subjection,
are confined to private sentiments, and the man-
agement of their own family concerns. All per-
sons possessing any portion of power ought to be
strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that
they act in trust, and that they are to account for
their conduct in that trust to the one great Mas-
ter, Author, and Founder of society.
BURKE :
Refections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
Turn a Christian society into an established
church, and it is no longer a voluntary assembly
for the worship of God ; it is a powerful corpo-
ration, full of such sentiments and passions as
usually distinguish those bodies: a dread of in-
novation, an attachment to abuses, a propensity
to tyranny and oppression.
ROBERT HALL:
Apology for the Freedom of the Press, Sect. V.
If Mr. Gladstone has made out, as he con-
ceives, an imperative necessity for a State Re-
ligion, much more has he made it out to be
imperatively necessary that every army should,
in its collective capacity, profess a religion. Is
he prepared to adopt this consequence ?
On the morning of the 1 3th of August, in the
year 1704, two great captains, equal in authority,
united by close private and public ties, but of
different creeds, prepared for a battle, on the
event of which were staked the liberties of
Europe. Marlborough had passed a part of the
night in prayer, and before daybreak received
the sacrament according to the rites of the
Church of England. He then hastened to join
Eugene, who had probably just confessed him-
self to a Popish priest. The generals consulted
together, formed their plan in concert, and re-
paired each to his own post. Marlborough gave
orders for public prayers. The English chap-
lains read the service at the head of the English
regiments. The Calvinistic chaplains of the
Dutch army, with heads on which hand of
Bishop had never been laid, poured forth their
supplications in front of their countrymen. In
the mean time the Danes might listen to their
Lutheran ministers; and Capuchins might en-
courage the Austrian squadrons, and pray to the
Virgin for a blessing on the arms of the Holy
Roman Empire. The battle commences, and
these men of various religions all act like mem-
bers of one body. The Calholic and the Protest-
ant general exert themselves to assist and to
surpass each other. Before sunset the Empire
is saved. France has lost in a day the fruits of
eighty years of intrigue and of victory. And
the allies, after conquering together, return
thanks to God separately, each after his own
form of worship. Now, is this practical athe-
ism ? Would any man in his senses say, that,
because the allied army had unity of action and
a common interest, and because a heavy re-
sponsibility lay on its chief, it was therefore im-
peratively necessary that the army should, as an
army, have one established religion, that Eugene
should be deprived of his command for being a
Catholic, that all the Dutch and Austrian colo-
nels should be broken for not subsciibing t'?e
Thirty-nine Articles ? Certainly not. The most
ignorant grenadier on the field of battle would
have seen the absurdity of such a proposition.
"I know," he would have said, "that the Prince
of Savoy goes to mass, and that our Corporal
John cannot abide it; but what has the mass to
do with the taking of the village of Blenheim ?
The prince wants to beat the French, and so
does Corporal John. If we stand by each other
we shall most likely beat them. If we send all
the Papists and Dutch away, Tallard will have
every man of us." Mr. Gladstone himself, we
imagine, would admit that our honest grenadier
would have the best of the argument; and if so,
what follows ? Even this : that all Mr. Glad-
stone's general principles about power, and re-
sponsibility, and personality, and conjoint action,
must be given up; and that, if his theory is to
stand at all, it must stand on some other foun-
dation. LORD MACAULAY:
Gladstone on Church and State, April, 1839.
When Mr. Gladstone wishes to prove that the
government ought to establish and endow a re-
ligion, and to fence it with a Test Act, govern-
ment is rd TTUV in the moral world. Those who
would confine it to secular ends take a low view
of its nature. A religion must be attached to
its agency; and this religion must be that of the
conscience of the governor, or none. It is for
the governor to decide between Papists and
Protestants, Jansenists and Molinists, Arminians
and Calvinists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians,
Sabellians and Tritheists, Homoousians and Ho-
moiousians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Mono-
thelites and Monophysites, Paedobaptists and
Anabaptists. It is for him to rejudge the acts
of Nice and Rimini, of Ephesus and Chalcedon,
of Constantinople and St. John Lateran, of
Trent and Dort. It is for him to arbitrate be-
tween the Greek and the Latin procession, and
to determine whether that mysterious filioqut
shall or shall not have a place in the national
creed. When he has made up his mind, he is
to tax the whole community in order to pay
people to teach his opinion, whatever it may be.
He is to rely on his own judgment, though it
may be opposed to that of nine-tenths of the so-
ciety. He is to act on his own judgment, at the
risk of exciting the most formidable discontents.
He is to inflict perhaps on a great majority of
the population, what, whether Mr. Gladstone
may choose to call it persecution or not, will
always be felt as persecution by those who suffer
it. He is, on account of differences often too
slight for vulgar comprehension, to deprive the
CHURCH AND STATE. CLASSIFICATION. CLERGY. 115
state of the services of the ablest men. He is
to debase and enfeeble the community which he
governs, from a nation into a sect. In our own
country, for example, millions of Catholics,
millions of Protestant Dissenters, are to be ex-
cluded from all power and honours. A great
hostile fleet is on the sea; but Nelson is not to
command in the Channel if in the mystery of
the Trinity he confounds the persons. An in-
vading army has landed in Kent; but the Duke
of Wellington is not to be at the head of our
forces if he divides the substance. And, after
all this, Mr. Gladstone tells us that it would be
wrong to imprison a Jew, a Mussulman, or a
Budhist,for a day; because really a government
cannot understand these matters, and ought not
to meddle with questions which belong to the
Church. A singular theologian, indeed, the
government ! So learned that it is competent to
exclude Grotius from office for being a Semi-
Pelagian, so unlearned that it is incompetent to
fine a Hindoo peasant a rupee for going on a
pilgrimage to Juggernaut.
LORD MACAULAY:
Gladstone on Church and State.
We think that government, like every other
contrivance of human wisdom, from the highest
to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end
best when it is constructed with a single view to
that end. Mr. Gladstone, who loves Plato, will
not quarrel with us for illustrating our proposi-
tion, after Plato's fashion, from the most familiar
objects. Take cutlery, for example. A blade
which is designed both to shave and to carve
will certainly not shave so well as a razor, or
carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy
of painting which should also be a bank would,
in all probability, exhibit very bad pictures and
discount very bad bills. A gas company which
should also be an infant society would, we
apprehend, light the streets ill and teach the
children ill. On this principle we think that
government should be organized solely with a
view to its main end ; and that no part of its
efficiency for that end should be sacrificed in
order to promote any other end, however ex-
cellent. LORD MACAULAY:
Gladstone on Church and State.
CLASSIFICATION.
What is set down by order and division doth
demonstrate that nothing is left out or omitted,
but all is there. LORD BACON.
Hardly is there a similarity detected between
two or three facts, than men hasten to extend it
to all others. SIR W. HAMILTON.
In nature it is not convenient to consider
every difference that is in things, and divide
them into distinct classes: this will run us into
particulars, and we shall be able to establish no
general truth. LOCKE.
Ranking all things under general and special
heads renders the nature or uses of a thing more
easy to be found out, when we seek in what
rank of being it lies. DR. 1. WATTS.
CLERGY.
The essential point in the notion of a priest is
this : that he is a person made necessary to our
intercourse with God, without being necessary
or beneficial to us morally, an unreasonable,
unmoral, unspiritual necessity. T. ARNOLD.
By the secular cares and avocations which
accompany marriage the clergy have been fur-
nished with skill in common life.
ATTERBURY.
The sacred function can never be hurt by their
sayings, if not first reproached by our doings.
ATTERBURY.
These are not places merely of favour, ,the
charge of souls lies upon them; the greatest
account whereof will be required at their hands.
LORD BACON.
He was a priest, and looked for a priest's re-
ward ; which was our brotherly love, and the
good of our souls and bodies.
LORD BACON.
Supposing, however, that something like
moderation were visible in this political sermon,
yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have
little agreement. No sound ought to be heard
in the church but the healing voice of Christian
charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil
government gains as little as that of religion by
this confusion of duties. Those who quit their
proper character to assume what does not belong
to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both
of the character they leave and of the character
they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the
world, in which they are so fond of meddling,
and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which
they pronounce with so much confidence, they
have nothing of politics but the passions they
excite. Surely the church is a place where one
day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissen-
sions and animosities of mankind.
BURKE :
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
From the indisposition of mankind to direct
their thoughts to a futurity ; from their proneness
to immerse themselves in present and sensible
objects, and the ignorance which follows of
course, it has been thought necessary to set apart
a particular order of men to inculcate its truths
and to exemplify its duties.
ROBERT HALL:
Fragment, On Village Preaching. '
Recollect for your encouragement the reward
that awaits the faithful minister. Such is the
mysterious condescension of divine grace, that
though it reserves to itself the exclusive honout
of being the fountain of all, yet, by the em-
CLERGY.
ployment of human agency in the completion
of its designs, it contrives to multiply its gifts,
and to lay a foundation for eternal rewards.
When the church, in the perfection of beauty,
shall be presented to Christ as a bride adorned
for her husband, the faithful pastor will appear
iis the friend of the bridegroom, who greatly re-
joices because of the bridegroom's voice. His joy
will be the joy of his Lord, inferior in degree,
but of the same nature, and arising from the
same sources: while he will have the peculiar
happiness of reflecting thai he has contributed
to it; contributed, as an humble instrument, to
that glory and felicity of which he will be con-
scious he is utterly unworthy to partake. To
have been himself the object of mercy, to have
been the means of imparting it to others, and of
dispensing the unsearchable riches of Christ,
will produce a pleasure which can never be ad-
equately felt or understood until we see him as
he is. ROBERT HALL :
Discouragements and Supports of the
Christian Minister.
Ministers of the gospel in this quarter of the
globe resemble the commanders of an army
stationed in a conquered country, whose inhab-
itants, overawed and subdued, yield a partial
obedience : they have sufficient employment in
attempting to conciliate the affections of the na-
tives, and in carrying into execution the orders
and regulations of their Prince ; since there is
much latent disaffection, though no open rebel-
lion, a strong partiality to their former rulers,
with few attempts to erect the standard of revolt.
ROBERT HALL:
Address to Rev. Eustace Carey.
lie [the country parson] is not witty, or
learned, or eloquent, but holy : a character
Hermogenes never dreamed of, and therefore
he could give no precepts thereof.
GEORGE HERBERT.
We hold that God's clergy are a state which
hath been, and will be as long as there is a
church upon earth, necessary, by the plain word
of God himself: a state whereunto the rest of
God's people must be subject as touching things
that appertain to their souls' health.
HOOKER.
It cannot enter any man's conceit to think it
^awful that every man which listeth should take
upon him charge in the church; and therefore
a solemn admittance is of such necessity that
without it there can be no church polity.
HOOKER.
Let it therefore be required, on both parts, at
the hands of the clergy, to be in meanness of
estate like the apostles; at the hands of the
laity, to be as they who lived under the apostles.
HOOKER.
There is nothing noble in a clergyman but
burning zeal for the salvation of souls ; nor any-
thing poor in his profession but idleness and
worldly spirit. LAW.
The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was
long the ascendency which naturally and prop-
erly belongs to intellectual superiority.
LORD MACAULAY.
It is better that men should be governed hy
priestcraft than violence.
LORD MACAULAY.
Bishops are now unfit to govern, because of
their learning. They are bred up in another
law ; they run to the text for something done
among the Jews that concerns not England.
'Tis just as if a man would have a kettle and he
would not go to our braziers to have it made as
they would kettles, but he would have it made
as Hiram made his brass-work who wrought in
Solomon's Temple. SELDEN.
God is the fountain of honour, and the con
duit by which he conveys it to the sons of men
are virtues and generous practices. Some, in-
deed, may please and promise themselves high
matters from full revenues, stately palaces, court
interests, and great dependences. But that
which makes the clergy glorious, is to be know-
ing in their profession, unspotted in their lives,
active and laborious in their charges, bold and
resolute in opposing seducers, and daring to look
vice in the face, though never so potent and
illustrious; and, lastly, to be gentle, courteous,
and compassionate to all. These are our robes
and our maces, our escutcheons and highest
titles of honour. SOUTH.
But as there are certain mountebanks and
quacks in physic, so there are much the same
also in divinity. SOUTH.
It is a sad thing when men shall repair to the
ministry not for preferment but refuge; like
malefactors flying to the altar only to save theii
lives. SOUTH.
Faithful ministers are to stand and endure the
brunt : a common soldier may fly, when it is
the duty of him that holds the standard to die
upon the place. SOUTH.
Let the minister be low, his interest inconsid-
erable, the word will suffer for his sake ; the
message will still find reception according to
the dignity of the messenger. SOUTH.
The clergy prevent themselves from doing
much service to religion by affecting so much to
converse with each other, and caring so little to
mingle with the laity. SWIFT.
A divine dares hardly show his person among
the gentlemen; or, if he fall into such com-
pany, he is in continual apprehension that some
pert man of pleasure should break an unman-
nerly jest, and render him ridiculous.
SWIFT.
The clergy's business lies among the laity ;
n ir is there a more effectual way to forward the
salvation of men's souls than for spiritual per-
sons to make themselves as agreeable as they
can in the conversations of the world.
SWIFT.
CLERGY. COINS. COMEDY.
117
If the cleigy would a little study the arts of
conversation, they might be welcome at every
party where there was the least regard for po-
liteness or good sense. SWIFT.
Neither is it rare to observe among excellent
and learned divines a certain ungracious man-
ner or an unhappy tone of voice, which they
never have been able to shake off. SWIFT.
It seems to be in the power of a reasonable
clergyman to make the most ignorant man com-
prehend his duty. SWIFT.
I cannot forbear warning you against endeav-
cring at wit in your sermons; because many of
your calling have made themselves ridiculous by
attempting it. SWIFT.
He [Bishop Atterbury] never attempts your
passions until he has convinced your reason.
All the objections which he -can form are laid
open and dispersed before he uses the least
vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks
be has your head, he very soon wins your heart ;
and never pretends to show the beauty of holi-
ness until he hath convinced you of the truth
of it.
Would every one of our clergymen be thus
careful to recommend truth and virtue in their
proper figures, and show so much concern for
them as to give them all the additional force
they were able, it is not possible that nonsense
should have so many hearers as you find it has
in dissenting congregations, for no reason in the
world but because it is spoken extempore : for
ordinary minds are wholly governed by their
eyes and ears, and there is no way to come at
their hearts but by power over their imagina-
tions.
SWIFT and STEELE : Tatter, No. 66.
The truth is, mankind have an innate pro-
pensity, as to other errors, so, to that of endea-
vouring to serve God by proxy ; to commit to
some distinct Order of men the care of their
religious concerns, in the same manner as they
confide the care of their bodily health to the
physician, and of their legal transactions to the
lawyer ; deeming it sufficient to follow implicitly
their directions, without attempting themselves
to become acquainted with the mysteries of
medicine or of law. For man, except when
unusually depraved, retains enough of the image
of his Maker to have a natural reverence for re-
ligion, and a desire that God should be wor-
shipped; but, through the corruption of his
nature, his heart is (except when divinely puri-
fied) too much alienated from God to take de-
light in serving Him. Hence the disposition
men have ever shown to substitute the devotion
of the priest for their own ; to leave the duties-
of piety in his hands, and to let him serve God
in their stead. This disposition is not so much
the consequence, as itself the origin, of priest-
craft WHATELY :
Errors of Romanism,
COINS.
There is a great affinity between coins and
poetry, and your medallist and critic are much
nearer related than the world imagines.
ADDISON.
Compare the beauty and comprehensiveness
of legends on ancient coins. ADDISON.
Among the great variety of ancient coins
which I saw at Rome I could not but take par-
ticular notice of such as relate to any of the
buildings or statues which are still extant.
ADDISON.
Till about the end of the third century I do
not remember to have seen the head of a Ro-
man emperor drawn with a full face: they
always appear in profile. ADDISON.
Old coins are like so many maps for explain-
ing the ancient geography. ADDISON.
I have seen an antiquary lick an old coin,
among other trials, to distinguish the age of it
by its taste. ADDISON.
You will never, with all your medallic elo-
quence, persuade Eugenius that it is better to
have a pocketful of Othos than of Jacobuses.
ADDISON.
COMEDY.
Comedy was satirical. Satire is best on the
living. It was soon found that the best way to
depress an hated character was to turn it into
ridicule; and therefore the greater vices, which
in the beginning were lashed, gave place to the
contemptible. Its passion, therefore, became
ridicule. Every writing must have its charac-
teristic passion. What is that of comedy, if
not ridicule ? Comedy, therefore, is a satirical
poem, representing an action carried on by dia-
logue, to excite laughter by describing ludicrous
characters. See Aristotle. BURKE:
Hints for an Essay on the Drama.
Comedy . . . should be mere common life,
and not one jot bigger. Every character should
speak upon the stage, not only what it would
utter in the situation there represented, but in
the same manner in which it would express it.
For which reason, I cannot allow rhymes in
comedy, unless they were put into the mouth
and came out of the mouth of a mad poet.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Jan. 23, 1752.
It is not so difficult to fill a comedy with good
repartee as might be at first imagined, if we
consider how completely both parties are in the
power of the author. The blaze of wit in The
School for Scandal astonishes us less when we
remember that the writer had it in his power to
frame both the question and the answer ; the
reply and the rejoinder; the time and the place.
He must be a poor proficient who cannot keep
COMEDY. COMMENTA TORS.
up the game when both the ball, the wall, and
the racket are at his sole command.
COLTON : Lacon.
Comedy is a representation of common life,
in low subjects. DRYDEN.
In comedy there is somewhat more of the
worse likeness to be taken, because it is often
to produce laughter, which is occasioned by the
eight of some deformity. DRYDEN.
In the name of art as well as in the name of
virtue, we protest against the principle that the
world of pure comedy is one into which no
moral enters. If comedy be an imitation,
under whatever conventions, of real life, how is
it possible that it can have no reference to the
great rule which directs life, and to feelings
which are called forth by every incident of life ?
If what Mr. Charles Lamb says were correct,
the inference would be that these dramatists did
not in the least understand the very first prin-
ciples of their craft. Pure landscape-painting
into which no light or shade enters, pure por-
trait-painting into which no expression enters,
are phrases less at variance with sound criticism
than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these
dramatists is a world into which no moral enters.
Morality constantly enters into that world, a
sound morality, and an unsound morality; the
eound morality to be insulted, derided, asso-
ciated with everything mean and hateful ; the
unsound morality to be set off to every advan-
tage, and inculcated by all methods, direct and
indirect. LORD MACAULAY :
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, Jan. 1841.
The sentimental comedy still reigned, and
Goldsmith's comedies were not sentimental.
LORD MACAULAY.
The vast and inexhaustible variety of knavery,
folly, affectation, humour, etc., etc., as mingled
with each other, or as modified by difference
of age, SQJC, temper, education, profession, and
habit of body, are all within the royalty of the
modern comic dramatist. . . . The ancients
were much more limited in their circle of ma-
terials. SIR WALTER SCOTT.
COMMENTATORS.
There is another kind of pedant, who, with
a.l Tom Folio's impertinences, hath greater
supersti uctures and embellishments of Greek
and Latin, and is still more insupportable than
the other, in the same degree as he is more
learned. Of this kind very often are editors,
commentators, interpreters, scholiasts, and crit-
ics ; and, in short, all men of deep learning
without common sense.
These persons set a greater value on them-
selves for having found out the meaning of a
pnssage in Greek, than upon the author for
having written it ; nay, -will allow the passage
itself not to have any beauty in it at the same
time that they would be considered as the great-
est men of the age for having interpreted it.
They will look with contempt on the most
beautiful poems that have been composed by
any of their contemporaries; but will lock
themselves up in their studies for a twelvemonth
together, to correct, publish, and expound such
trifles of antiquity, as a modern author would
be condemned for.
ADDISON: Toiler, No. 158.
Men of the strictest morals, severest lives,
and the gravest professions, will write vdumea
upon an idle sonnet, that is originally in Greek
or Latin ; give editions of the most immoral
authors; and spin out whole pages upon the
various readings of a lewd expression. All
that can be said in excuse for them is, that their
works sufficiently show they have no taste of
their authors, and that what they do in this
kind, is out of their great learning, and not out
of any levity or lasciviousncss of temper.
ADDISON: Tatler, No. 158.
Shallow pedants cry up one another much
more than men of solid and useful learning.
To read the titles they give an editor, or collator
of a manuscript, you would take him for the
glory of the commonwealth of letters, and the
wonder of his age, when perhaps upon exami-
nation you find that he has only rectified a Greek
particle, or laid out a whole sentence in proper
commas.
They are obliged indeed to be thus lavish of
their praises, that they may keep one another in
countenance ; and it is no wonder if a great deal
of knowledge, which is not capable of making a
man wise, has a natural tendency to make him
vain and arrogant.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 105.
I have often fancied with myself how enraged
an old Latin author would be should he see the
several absurdities in sense and grammar which
are imputed to him by some or other of these
various readings. In one he speaks nonsense ;
in another makes use of a word that was never
heard of; and indeed there is scarce a solecism
in writing which the best author is not guilty
of, if we may be at liberty to read him in the
words of some manuscript which the laborious
editor has thought fit to examine in the prose
cution of his work.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 470.
We want short, sound, and judicious notes
upon Scripture, without running into common-
places, pursuing controversies, or reducing those
notes to artificial method, but leaving them quite
loose and native. For, certainly, as those wines
whicli flow from the first treading of the grape
are sweeter and better than those forced out by
the press, which gives them the roughness of
the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines
best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush
of the Scriptures, and are not wrung into con*
troversies and commonplaces.
LORD BACON.
COMMENTA TORS. COMMERCE.
119
Bentley wrote a letter . . . upon the scriptural
glosses in our present copies of Hesychius, which
he considered interpolations from a later hand.
DE QUINCEY.
Enlarging an author's sense, and building
fancies of our own upon his foundation, we may
call paraphrasing: but more properly, changing,
adding, patching, piecing. FELTON.
All these together are the foundation of all
thr/se heaps of comments, which are piled so
high upon authors that it is difficult sometimes
to clear the text from the rubbish.
FELTON.
The obscurity is brought over them by igno-
rsnce arid age, made yet more obscure by their
pedantical elucidators. FELTON.
The best writers have been perplexed with
notes and obscured with illustrations.
FELTON.
What a gift has John Harlebach, professor at
Vienna, in tediousness ! who, being to expound
the prophet Isaiah to his auditors, read twenty-
one years on the first chapter, and yet finished
it not! T. FULLER.
Others spend their lives in remarks on lan-
guage, or explanations of antiquities, and only
afford materials for lexicographers and com-
mentators, who are themselves overwhelmed by
subsequent collectors, that equally destroy the
memory of their predecessors by amplification,
transposition, or contraction. Every new sys-
tem of nature gives birth to a swarm of exposi-
tors whose business is to explain and illustrate
it, and who can hope to* exist no longer than the
founder of their sect preserves his reputation.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 106.
Scholiasts, those copious expositors of places,
pour out a vain overflow of learning on pas-
sages plain and easy. LOCKE.
Of those scholars who have disdained to con-
fine themselves to verbal criticism few have been
successful. The ancient languages have, gener-
ally, a magical influence on their faculties.
They were " fools called into a circle by Greek
invocations." The Iliad and ALneid were to
them not books, but curiosities, or rather rel-
iques. They no more admired those works for
their merits than a good Catholic venerates the
house of the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture.
Wha f ever was classical was good. Homer was a
great poet, and so was Callimachus. The epis-
tles of Cicero were fine, and so were those of
Phalaris. Even with respect to questions of
evidence they fell into the same error. The
authority of all narrations, written in Greek or
Latin, was the same with them. It never crossed
their minds that the lapse of five hundred years,
or the distance of five hundred leagues, could
affect the accuracy of a narration ; that Livy
Cuuld be a less veracious historian than Poly-
bius ; or that Plutarch could know less about
the friends of Xenophon than Xenophon him-
self. Deceived by the distance of time, they
seem to consider all the Classics as contempo-
raries ; just as I have known people in England,
deceived by the distance of place, take it for
granted that all persons who live in India are
neighbours, and ask an inhabitant of Bombay
about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta.
It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will
ever again pass over Europe. But should such
a calamity happen, it seems not improbable that
some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a
histoiy of England from Miss Porter's Scottish
Chiefs, Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel
Wraxall's Memoirs.
LORD MACAULAY:
On the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824.
They show their learning uselessly, and make
a long periphrasis on every word of the book
they explain. DR. I. WATTS.
The commentator's professed object is to ex-
plain, to enforce, to illustrate doctrines claimed
as true. WHKWELL.
The spirit of commentation turns to questions
of taste, of metaphysics, of morals, with far
more avidity than to physics. WHEWELL.
COMMERCE.
I am wonderfully delighted to see such a body
of men thriving in their own private fortunes, and
at the same time promoting the public stock ; or
in other words, raising estates for their own fami
lies by bringing into their country whatever is
wanting, and carrying out of it whatever is
superfluous. Nature seems to have taken a par-
ticular care to disseminate her blessings among
the different regions of the world with an eye
to this mutual intercourse and traffic among
mankind, that the natives of the several parts
of the globe might have a kind of dependence
upon one another, and be united together by
their common interest.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 69.
There are not more useful members in a
commonwealth than merchants. They knit
mankind together in a mutual intercourse of
good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find
work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and
magnificence to the great. . . . Trade, without
enlarging the British territories, has given us a
kind of additional empire : it has multiplied the
number of the rich, made our landed estates
infinitely more valuable than they were formerly,
and added to them an accession of other estates
as valuable as the lands themselves.
ADDISON.
You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not
mistaken, if you reflect how generally it is true,
that commerce, the principal object of that office,
flourishes most when it is left to itself. Interest,
the great guide of commerce, is not a blind one.
It is very well able to find its own way ; and its
necessities are its best laws. BURKE :
Speech on the Plan for Ecittomical Rt-
form, Feb. 1 1, 1780.
120
COMMERCE. COMMON SENSE. COMPANY.
Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with
(he trade of provisions is the most dangerous,
and it is always worst in the time when men are
most disposed to it, that is, in the time of
scarcity; because there is nothing on which the
passions of men are so violent, and their judg-
ment so weak, and on which there exists such a
multitude of ill-founded popular prejudices.
BURKE:
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, 1795.
COMMON SENSE.
Common sense is a phrase employed to denote
that degree of intelligence, sagacity, and pru-
dence, which is common to all men.
FLEMING.
Common sense meant once something very
different from that plain wisdom, the common
heritage of men, which we now call by this
name, having been bequeathed to us by a very
complex theory of the senses, and of a sense
which was the common bond of them all, and
which passed its verdicts on the reports which
they severally made of it. R. C. TRENCH.
COMPANY.
Bad company is Mke a nail driven into a post,
which after the fit- t or second blow may be
drawn out with littlt difficulty; but being once
driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take
hold to draw it out, but which can only be done
by the destruction of the wood.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
No man in effect doth accompany with others
but he learneth, ere he is aware, some gesture,
voice, or fashion.
LORD BACON : Natural History.
A crowd is not company, and faces are but a
gallery of pictures, where there is no love.
LORD BACON.
In young minds there is commonly a strong
propensity to particular intimacies and friend-
ships. Youth, indeed, is the season when friend-
ships are sometimes formed which not only
continue through succeeding life, but which
glow to the last, with a tenderness unknown to
the connections begun in cooler years. The
propensity, therefore, is not to be discouraged,
though, at the same time, it must be regulated
with much circumspection and care. Too many
of the pretended friendships of youth are mere
combinations in pleasure. They are often
founded on capricious likings, suddenly con-
tracted and as suddenly dissolved. Sometimes
they are the effect of interested complaisance
and flattery on the one side, and of credulous
fondness on the other. Such rash and danger-
ous connections should be avoided, lest they
afterwards load us with dishonour.
We should ever have it fixed in our memo-
ries, that by the character of those whom we
choose for our friends, our own is likely to be
formed, and will certainly be judged of by the
world. We ought, therefore, to be slow and
cautious in contracting intimacy ; but when a
virtuous friendship is once established, we must
ever consider it as a sacred engagement.
BLAIR.
A company consisting wholly of people of
the first quality cannot for that reason be called
good company, in the common acceptation of
the phrase, unless they are, into the bargain,
the fashionable and accredited company of the
place ; for people of the very first quality can be
as silly, as ill bred, and as worthless, as people
of the meanest degree. On the other hand, a
company consisting entirely of people of very
low condition, whatever their merits or parts
may be, can never be called good company ;
and consequently should not be much frequented,
though by no means despised.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Oct. 12, 1748.
Be cautious with whom you associate, and
never give your company or your confidence to
persons of whose good principles you are not
certain. No person that is an enemy to God
can be a friend to man. He that has already
proved himself ungrateful to the Author of
every blessing, will not scruple, when it will
serve his turn, to shake off a fellow-worm like
himself. He may render you instrumental to
his own purposes, but he will never benefit you.
A bad man is a curse to others ; as he is se-
cretly, notwithstanding- all his boasting and
affected gaiety, a burden to himself. Shun him
as you would a serpent in your path. Be not
seduced by his rank, his wealth, his wit, or his
influence. Think of him as already in the
grave; think of him as standing before the
everlasting God in judgment. This awful re-
ality will instantly strip off all that is now so
imposing, and present him in his true light, the
object rather of your compassion and of your
prayers than of your wonder or imitation.
BISHOP W. H. COLERIDGE.
In all societies it is advisable to associate if
possible with the highest : not that the highest
are always the best, but because, if disgusted
there, we can at any time descend ; but if we
begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.
In the grand theatre of human life, a box ticket
takes us through the house.
COLTON: Lacon.
They who constantly converse with men far
above their estates shall reap shame and loss
thereby: if thou payest nothing, they will count
thee a sucker, no branch ; a wen, no member
of their company. T. FULLER.
There is a certain magic or charm in com-
pany, for it will assimilate, and make you like
to them, by much conversation with them : if
they be good company, it is a great means to
make you good, or confirm you in goodness;
COMPANY. COMPOSITION.
121
but if they be bad, it is twenty to one but they
will infect and corrupt you. Therefore be wary
and shy in choosing and entertaining, or fre-
quenting any company or companions,; be not
too hasty in committing yourself to them ; stand
off awhile till you have inquired of some (that
you know by experience to be faithful) what
they are; observe what company they keep; be
not too easy to gain acquaintance, but stand off,
and keep a distance yet awhile, till you have
observed and learnt touching them. Men or
women thz.t are greedy of acquaintance, or hasty
in it, are oftentimes snared in ill company be-
fore they are aware, and entangled so that they
cannot easily loose from it after, when they
would. SIR M. HALE.
One that has well digested his knowledge,
both of books and men, has little enjoyment but
in the company of a few select companions.
He feels too sensibly how much all the rest of
mankind fall short of the notions which he has
entertained ; and his affections being thus con-
fined within a narrow circle, no wonder he car-
ries them further than if they were more general
and undistinguished.
DAVID HUME: Essays.
Good or bad company is the greatest blessing
or greatest plague of life. L'EsTRANGE.
All matches, friendships, and societies are
dangerous and inconvenient, where the con-
tractors are not equal. L' ESTRANGE.
Let them have ever so learned lectures of
breeding, that which will most influence their
carriage will be the company they converse with
and the fashion of those about them.
LOCKE.
Mirth from company is but a fluttering, un-
quiet motion, that beats about the breast for a
few moments, and after leaves it empty.
POPE.
Company, in any action, gives credit and
countenance to the agent; and so much as the
sinner gets of this so much he casts oft' of shame.
SOUTH.
Company, though it may reprieve a man from
his melancholy, yet cannot secure him from his
conscience. SOUTH.
Company, he thinks, lessens the shame of
vice by sharing it, and abates the torrent of a
common odium by deriving it into many chan-
nels, and thereby if he cannot wholly avoid the
eye of the observer, he hopes to distract it at
least by a multiplicity of the object.
SOUTH.
learning, wit, gallantry, and good breeding
are all but subordinate qualities in society, and
are of no value, but as they are subservient to
benevolence, and tend to a certain manner of
being or appearing equal to the rest of the com-
pany ; for conversation is composed of an as-
sembly of men, as they are men, and not as
they are distinguished by fortune.
SIR R. STEELE: Taller, No. 45.
That part of life which we spend in company
is the most pleasing of all our moments ; and
therefore I think our behaviour in it should have
its laws as well as the part of our being which
is generally esteemed the more important. From
hence it is, that from long experience I have
made it a maxim, That however we may pre-
tend to take satisfaction in sprightly mirth and
high jollity, there is no great pleasure in any
company where the basis of the society is not
mutual good will. When this is in the ro^ra,
every trifling circumstance, the most minute ac-
cident, the absurdity of a servant, the repetition
of an old story, the look of a man when he is
telling it, the most indifferent and the most or-
dinary occurrences, are matters which produce
mirth and good-humour.
SIR R. STEELE: Tat/tr, No. 219.
Men would come into company with ten times
the pleasure they do, if they were sure of hear-
ing nothing that would shock them, as well as
expected what would please them. When we
know every person that is spoken of is repre-
sented by one who has no ill will, and every-
thing that is mentioned described by one that is
apt to set it in the best light, the entertainment
must be delicate, because the cook has nothing
brought to his hand but what is the most excel-
lent in its kind. Beautiful pictures are the en-
tertainments of pure minds, and deformities of
the corrupted. It is a degree towards the life
of angels when we enjoy conversation wherein
there is nothing presented but in its excellence :
and a degree towards that of demons, wherein
nothing is shown but in its degeneracy.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 100.
As a man is known by his company, so a
man's company may be known by his manner
of expressing himself. SWIFT.
No man can be provident of his time, who is
not prudent in the choice of his company.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Company are to be avoided that are good for
nothing; those to be sought and frequented that
excel in some quality or other.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
COMPOSITION.
The great art of a writer shows itself in the
choice of pleasing allusions, which are generally
to be taken from the great or beautiful works of
art or nature; for, though whatever is new or
uncommon is apt to delight the imagination, the
chief design of an allusion being to illustrate
and explain the passages of an author, it should
be always borrowed from what is more known
and common than the passages which are to be
explained. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 421.
When I read an author of genius who writes
without method, I fancy myself in a wood that
abounds with a great many noble objects, rising
among one another in the greatest confusion and
disorder. When I read a methodical discourse,
122
COMPOSITION. CONFESSION. CONFIDENCE.
I am in a regular plantation, and can place my-
self in its several centres, so as to take a view
of all the lines and walks that are struck from
them. You may ramble in the one a whole day
together, and every moment discover something
or other that is new to you ; but when you have
done, you will have but a confused, imperfect
notion of the place : in the other your eye com-
mands the whole prospect, and gives you such
t:i idea of it as is not easily worn out of the
memory. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 476.
There is in all excellencies of composition a
kind of poverty or a casualty or jeopardy.
LORD BACON.
A fourth rule for constructing sentences with
proper strength is to make the members of them
go on rising and growing in their importance
above one another. This sort of arrangement
is called a climax, and is always considered as a
beauty in composition. BLAIR.
I wish our clever young poets would remem-
ber my homely definitions of prose and poetry :
that is, Prose is words in their best order ;
Poetry, the best words in the best order.
COLERIDGE.
A man by tumbling his thoughts and forming
them into expressions gives them a new kind of
fermentation ; which works them into a finer
body, and makes them much clearer than they
were before. JEREMY COLLIER.
In quatrains the last line of the stanza is to be
considered in the composition of the first.
DRYDEN.
Claudian perpetually closes his sense at the
end of a verse, commonly called golden, or two
substantives and two adjectives, with a verb
betwixt them to keep the peace. DRYDEN.
I have endeavoured, throughout this discourse,
that every former part might give strength unto
all that follow, and every latter bring some light
unto all before. HOOKER.
The numbers themselves, though of the heroic
measure, should be the smoothest imaginable.
POPE.
Long sentences in a short composition are
like large rooms in a little house.
SHENSTONE.
He that writes well in verse will often send
his thoughts in search through all the treasure
of words that express any one idea in the same
language, that so he may comport with the
measures of the rhyme, or with his own most
beautiful and vivid sentiments of the thing he
describes. DR. I. WATTS.
CONFESSION.
As in confession the revealing is for the ease
of a man's heart, so secret men come to the
knowledge of many things, while men rather
discharge than impart their minds.
LORD BACON.
He that confesses his sin, and prays for par-
don, hath punished his fault : and then there is
nothing left to be done by the offended party but
to return .to charity. JEREMY TAYLOR.
There is a great measure of discretion to be
used in the performance of confession, so that
you neither omit it when your own heart may
tell you that there is something amiss, nor over-
scrupuiously pursue it when you are not con-
scious to yourself of notable failings.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
You must not only acknowledge to God that
you are a sinner, but must particularly enumerate
the kinds of sin whereof you know yourself
guilty. WAKE.
CONFIDENCE.
Too great confidence in success is the likeliest
to prevent it; because it hinders us from making
the best use of the advantages which we enjoy.
ATTERBURY.
Use such as have prevailed before in things
you have employed them ; for that breeds con-
fidence, and they will strive to maintain their
prescription. LORD BACON.
Audacity and confidence doth in business so
great effects as a man may doubt that, besides
the very daring and earnestness and persisting
and importunity, there should be some secret
binding and stooping of other men's spirits to
such persons. LORD BACON.
Better to be despised for too anxious appre-
hensions than ruined by too confident security.
BURKE
Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an
aged bosom. LORD CHATHAM.
Confidence, as opposed to modesty, and dis-
tinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from
self-opinion, occasioned by ignorance and flat-
tery. JEREMY COLLIER.
Sith evils, great and unexpected, doth cause
oftentimes even them to think upon divine power
with fearfu''est suspicions, which have been
otherwise the most sacred adorers thereof; how
should we look for any constant resolution of
mind in such cases, saving only where unfeigned
affection to God hath bred the most assured con-
fidence to be assisted by his hand ?
HOOKER.
He that has confidence to turn his wishes into
demands, will be but a little way from thinking
he ought to obtain them. LOCKE.
A persuasion that we o.iall overcome any dif-
ficulties that we meet with in the sciences seldom
fails- to carry us through them. LOCKE.
Confidence in one's self is the chief nurse of
magnanimity ; which confidence, notwithstand-
ing, doth not leave the care of necessary furni-
ture for it; and therefore, of all the Grecians,
Homer doth ever make Achilles the best armed.
SIR P. SIDNEY.
CONFIDENCE. CONSCIENCE.
123
It concerns all who think it worth while to be
in earnest with their immortal souls not to abuse
themselves with a false confidence ; a thing so
easily taken up, and so hardly laid down.
SOUTH.
Be not confident and affirmative in an uncer-
tain matter, but report things modestly and
temperately, according to the degree of that
persuasion which is or ought to be begotten by
the efficacy of the authority or the reason in-
ducing thee. JEREMY_ TAYLOR.
He that puts his confidence in God only is
neither overjoyed in any great good things of
this life, nor sorrowful for a little thing.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
But surely modesty never hurt any cause, and
the confidence of man seems to me to be much
like the wrath of man. TlLLOTSON.
A true and humble sense of your own un-
worthiness will not suffer you to rise up to that
confidence which some men unwarrantably pre-
tend to, nay, unwarrantably require of others.
WAKE.
A confident dependence ill-grounded creates
such a negligence as will certainly ruin us in the
end. WAKE.
CONSCIENCE.
The unanswerable reasonings of Butler never
reached the .ear of the gray-haired pious peasant,
but he needs not their powerful aid to establish
his sure and certain hope of a blessed immor-
tality. It is no induction of logic that has trans-
fixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse,
when he withers beneath an influence unseen
by mortal eye, and shrinks from the anticipation
of a reckoning to come. In both the evidence
is within, a part of the original constitution of
every rational mind, planted there by Him who
framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power
of conscience : with an authority which no man
can put away from him it pleads at once for his
own future existence, and for the moral attri-
butes of an omnipresent and ever-present Deity.
In a healthy state of the moral feelings, the
man recognizes its, claim to supreme dominion.
Amid the degradation of guilt it still raises its
voice and asserts its right to govern the whole
man ; and though its warnings are disregarded,
and its claims disallowed, it proves within his
inmost soul an accuser that cannot be stilled,
and an avenging spirit that never is quenched.
DR. J. ABERCROMBIE.
A man's first care should be to avoid the re-
proaches of his own heart ; his next, to escape
the censures of the world. If the last interferes
with the former, it ought to be entirely neg
lected ; but otherwise there cannot be a greater
satisfaction to an honest mind than to see those
approbations which it gives itself seconded by
the applauses of the public. A man is more
sure of his conduct when the verdict which he
masses upon his own behaviour is thus warranted
md confirmed by the opinion of all that know
Jim. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 122.
A good conscience is to the soul what health
s to the body : it preserves a constant ease and
serenity within us, and more than countervails
all the calamities and afflictions which can
x>ssibly befall us. ADDISON.
Merit and good works is the end of man'i
motion, and conscience of the same is the ac-
complishment of man's rest. LORD BACON.
He has a secret spring of spiritual joy and the
continual feast of a good conscience within that
'orbids him to be miserable. BENTLEY.
Conscience is too great a power in the nature
of man to be altogether subdued : it may for a
time be repressed and kept dormant; but con-
jectures there are in human life which awaken
it; and when once re-awakened, it flashes on
the sinner's mind with all the horrors of an in.
visible ruler and a future judgment. BLAIR.
Men want arguments to reconcile their minclj
to what is done, as well as motives originally
to act right. BuRKE :
To the Marquis of Rockingham, Nov. 14, 1769.
It is thus, and for the same end, that they en-
deavour to destroy that tribunal of conscience
which exists independently of edicts and decrees.
Your despots govern by terror. They know
that he who fears God fears nothing else; and
therefore they eradicate from the mind, through
their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of
that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which
generates true courage. Their object is, that-
their fellow-citizens maybe under the dominion
of no awe but that of their Committee of Re-
search and of their lantefne. BURKE :
Letter to a Member, of the Nat. Assembly, 1791.
A tender conscience, of all things, ought to be
tenderly handled : for if you do not, you injure
not only the conscience, but the whole moral
frame and constitution is injured, recurring at
times to remorse, and seeking refuge only in
making the conscience callous. LURKE :
Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians^
May II, 1792.
What act of oblivion will cover them from
the wakeful memory, from the notices and issues
of the grand remembrancer the God within ?
BURKE :
To Rev. Dr. Hussey, Dec. 1796.
Conscience is a great ledger-book, in which
all our offences are written and registered.
ROBERT BURTON.
Light as a gossamer is the circumstance which
can bring enjoyment to a conscience which is
not its own accuser. W. CARLE' 'ON.
To say that we have a clear conscience is to
utter a solecism : had we never sinned, we
should have had no conscience. CARLYLE.
124
CONSCIENCE.
In the wildest anarchy of man's insurgent
appetites and sins, there is still a reclaiming
voice; a voice which, even when in practice
disregarded, it is impossible not to own ; and to
which, at the very moment that we refuse our
obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the
homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowl-
edge to be the best, the highest principles of
our nature. DR. T. CHALMERS.
Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy pas-
sions, conscience, though in her softest whispers,
gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of
an undying testimony. DR. T. CHALMERS.
Conscience is nothing but an actuated or
reflex knowledge of a superior power and an
equitable law ; a law impressed, and a power
above it impressing it. Conscience is not the.
lawgiver, but the remembrancer to mind us of
that law of nature imprinted upon our souls,
and actuate the considerations of the duty and
penalty, to apply the rule to our acts, and pass
judgment upon matter of fact: it is to give the
charge, urge the rule, enjoin the practice of
those notions of right, as part of our duty and
obedience. But man is as much displeased with
the directions of conscience, as he is out of love
with the accusations and condemning sentence
of this officer of God: we cannot naturally en-
dure any quick and lively practical thoughts of
God and his will, and distaste our own con-
sciences for putting us in mind of it: they there-
fore like not to retain God in their knowledge ;
that is, God in their own consciences ; they
would blow it out, as it is the candle of the
Lord in them to direct them and their acknowl-
edgments of God, to secure themselves against
the practice of its principles.
CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Every man's conscience testifies that he is
unlike what he ought to be, according to that
law engraven upon his heart. In some, indeed,
conscience maybe seared or dimmer; or sup-
pose some men may be devoid of conscience,
shall it be denied to be a thing belonging to the
nature of man ? Some men have not their eyes,
yet the power of seeing the light is natural to
man, and belongs to the integrity of the body.
Who would argue that, because some men are
mad, and have lost their reason by a distemper of
the brain, that therefore reason hath no reality,
but is an imaginary thing? But I think it is a
standing truth that every man hath been under
the scourge of it, one time or other, in a less
or a greater degree ; for, since every man is
an offender, it cannot be imagined conscience,
which is natural to man, and an active faculty,
should always lie idle, without doing this part
of its office. CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Man in the first instant of the use of reason,
finds natural principles within himself; direct-
ing and choosing them, he finds a distinction
between good and evil ; how could this be if
there were not some rule in him to try and dis-
tinguish good and evil ? If there were not such
a law and rule in ;nan, he could not sin ; for
where there is no law there is no transgression.
If man were a law to himself, and his own will
his law, there could be no such thing as evil;
whatsoever he willed would be good and agree-
able to the law, and no action could ^e ac-
counted sinful ; the worst act would be ar com-
mendable as the best Everything at man's
appointment would be good or evil. If there
were no such law, how should men that are
naturally inclined to .evil disapprove of that
which is unlovely, and approve of that good
which they practise not? No man but inwardly
thinks well of that which is good, while he
neglects it ; and thinks ill of that which is evU
while he commits it. Those that are vicious, do
praise those that practise the contrary virtues.
Those that are evil would seem to be good, and
those that are blameworthy yet will rebuke evil
in others. This is really to distinguish between
good and evil ; whence doth this arise, by what
rule do we measure this, but by some innate
principle ? CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Man witnesseth to a God in the operations
and reflections of conscience. (Rom. ii. 15.)
Their thoughts are accusing or excusing. An
inward comfort attends good actions, and an
inward torment follows bad ones; for there is
in every man's conscience fear of punishment
and hope of reward : there is, therefore, a sense
of some superior judge, which hath the power
both of rewarding and punishing. If man were
his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment,
since no man would inflict any evil or torment
on himself; nor can any man be said to reward
himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom
the action i.; pleasing, and is a conferring some
good a man had not before ; if an action be
done by a subject or servant, with hopes of re-
ward, it cannot be imagined that he expects a
reward from himself, but from the prince or per-
son whom he eyes in that action, and for whose
sake he doth it. CHARNOCK : Attributes.
From the transgression of this law of nature,
fears do arise in the consciences of men. Have
we not known or heard of men, struck by so
deep a dart, that could not be drawn out by the
strength of men, or appeased by the pleasure of
the world ; -and men crying out with horror,
upon a death-bed, of their past life, when " their
fear hath come as a desolation, and destruction
as a whirlwind" (Prov. i. 27): and often in
some sharp affliction, the dust hath been blown
off from men's consciences, which for a while
hath obscured the writing of the law. If men
stand in awe of punishment, there is then some
superior to whom they are accountable; if there
were no God, there were no punishment to fear.
What reason of any fear, upon the dissolution of
the knot between the soul and body, if there
were. not a God to punish, and the soul remained
not in. being to be punished?
CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Terrified consciences, that are Alagor-mis-
sabib, see nothing but matter of fear round
about. As they have lived without the bounds
of the law, they are afraid to fall under the
CONSCIENCE.
stroke of his justice : fear wishes the destruction
of that which it apprehends hurtful : it considers
him as a God to whom vengeance belongs, as
the Judge of all the earth. The less hopes such
an one hath of his pardon, the more joy he
would have to hear that his judge should be
stripped of his life : he would entertain with de-
light any reasons that might support him in the
< nceit that there were no God : in his present
state such a doctrine woufd be his security from
an account : he would as much rejoice if there
were no God to inflame an hell for him, as any
guilty malefactor would if there were no judge
tt order a gibbet for him.
CHARNOCK : Attributes.
There are excusing, as well as accusing re-
flections of conscience, when things are done
as works of the " law of nature" (Rom. ii. 15) :
as it doth not forbear to accuse and torture,
when a wickedness, though unknown to others,
is committed, so when a man hath done well,
though he be attacked with all the calumnies
the wit of man can forge, yet his conscience
justifies the action, and fills him with a singular
contentment. As there is torture in sinning, so
there is peace and joy in well doing. Neither
of those it could do, if it did not understand a
Sovereign Judge, who punishes the rebel, and
rewards the well-doer. Conscience is the foun-
dation of all religion ; and the two pillars upon
which it is built, are the being of God, and the
bounty of God to those who diligently seek
him. CHARNOCK : Attributes.
What is conscience? If there be such a
power, what is its office ? It would seem to be
simply this : to approve of our own conduct
when we do what we believe to be right, and to
censure us when we commit whatever we judge
to be wrong. DR. A. CROMBIE.
A good conscience is a port which is land-
locked on every side, where no winds can pos-
sibly invade. There a man may not only see
his own image, but that of his Maker, clearly
reflected from the undisturbed and silent waters.
DRYDEN.
Your modesty is so far from being ostenta-
tious of the good you do, that it blushes even to
have it known : and therefore I must leave you
to the satisfaction of your own conscience,
which, though a silent panegyric, is yet the best.
DRYDEN.
Of late years, and by the best writers, the
term conscience, and the phrases "moral fac-
ulty," " moral judgment," " faculty of moral
perception," "moral sense," " susceptibility of
moral emotion," have all been applied to that
faculty by which we have ideas of right and
wrong in reference to actions, and correspondent
feelings of approbation and disapprobation.
FLEMING.
There is not on earth a more capricious, ac-
commodating, or abused thing than Conscience.
It would be very possible to exhibit a curious
classification of consciences in genera and spe*
cies. What copious matter for speculation
among the varieties of lawyer's conscience
cleric conscience lay conscience lord's con
science peasant's conscience hermit's con-
science tradesman's conscience philosopher's
conscience Christian's conscience conscience
of reason conscience of faith healthy man's
conscience sick man's conscience ingenious
conscience simple conscience, &c., &c., c. f
&c. JOHN FOSTER: Journal.
If thou desirest ease, in the first take care <;f
the ease of thy mind, for that will make other
sufferings easy. T. FULLER.
Hither conscience is to be referred: If by a
comparison of things done with the rule there
be a consonancy, then follows the sentence of
approbation ; if discordant from it, the sentence
of disapprobation. SIR M. HALE.
What may we suppose is the reason of this?
why are so many impressed and so few profited ?
It is unquestionably because they are not obe-
dient to the first suggestion of conscience.
What that suggestion is it may not be easy pre-
cisely to determine; but it certainly is not to
make haste to efface the impression by frivolous
amusement, by gay society, by entertaining read-
ing, or even by secular employment: it is prob-
ably to meditate and pray. Let the first whisper,
be what it may, of the internal monitor be
listened to as an oracle, as the still small voice
which Elijah heard when he wrapped his face
in his mantle, recognizing it to be the voice of
God. Be assured it will not mislead you; it
will conduct you one step at least towards hap-
piness and truth; and by a prompt and punctual
compliance with it you will be prepared to
receive ampler communications and superior
light. ROBERT HALL :
Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte,
Consciousness is thus, on the one hand, the
recognition by the mind or "'ego" of its acts and
affections: in other words, the self-affirmation
that certain modifications are known by me, and
that these modifications are mine.
SIR W. HAMILTON.
If, therefore, mediate knowledge be in pro-
priety a knowledge, consciousness is not co-
extensive with knowledge.
SIR W. HAMILTON.
The legal brocard, " Falsus in uno, falsus in
omnibus," is a rule not more applicable to otLer
witnesses than to consciousness.
SIR'W. HAMILTON.
What is sorrow and contrition for sin ? A
being grieved with the conscience of sin, not
only that we have thereby incurred such dan-
ger, but also that we have so unkindly grieved
and provoked so good a God. HAMMOND.
Every man's heart and conscience doth in
good or evil, even secretly committed, and
known to none but itself, either like or disallow
itself. HOOKER.
126
CONSCIENCE.
Because conscience, and the fear of swerving
from that which is right, maketh them diligent
observers of circumstances, the loose regard
whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly.
HOOKER.
Person belongs only to intelligent agents, ca-
pable of a law, and happiness and misery : this
personality extends itself beyond present exist-
ence to what is past only by consciousness,
whereby it imputes to itself past actions, just
upon the same ground that it does the present.
LOCKE.
To have countenanced in him irregularity,
and disobedience to that light which he had,
would have been to have authorized disorder,
'onfusion, and wickedness in his creatures.
LOCKE.
Let a prince be guarded with soldiers, at-
tended by councillors, and shut up in forts ;* yet
if his thoughts disturb him, he is miserable.
PLUTARCH.
An honest mind is not in the power of a dis-
honest : to break its peace there must be some
guilt or consciousness. POPE.
In the commission of evil, fear no man so
much as thyself: another is but one witness
against thee ; thou art a thousand ; another thou
mayest avoid ; thyself thou canst not. Wicked-
ness is its own punishment. F. QUARLES.
Conscience is at most times a very faithful
and prudent admonitor. SHENSTONE.
I seek no better warrant than my own con-
science, nor no greater pleasure than mine own
contentation. SIR P. SIDNEY.
" Conscience" is a Latin word, and, according
to the very notation of it, imports a double or
joint knowledge; one of a divine law, and the
other of a man's own action ; and so is the ap-
plication of a general law to a particular instance
of practice. SOUTH.
Every man brings such a degree of this light
into the world with him, that though it cannot
bring him to heaven, yet it will carry him so
far that if he follows it faithfully he shall meet
with another light which shall carry him quite
through. SOUTH.
There is an innate light in every man, dis-
covering to him the first lines of duty in the
common notions of good and evil. SOUTH.
The authority of conscience stands founded
upon its vicegerency and deputation under God.
SOUTH.
Conscience never commands nor forbids any
thing authentically but there is some law of God
which commands or forbids it first. SOUTH.
If conscience be naturally apprehensive and
sagacious, certainly we should trust and rely
upon the reports of it. SOUTH.
Let every one, therefore, attend the sentence
of his conscience : for he may be sure it will not
daub nor flatter. SOUTH.
The reason of mankind cannot suggest any
solid ground of satisfaction but in making God
our friend, and in carrying a conscience so clear
as may encourage us with confidence to cast our-
selves upon him. SOUTH.
Conscience is its own counsellor, the sole
master of its own secrets, and it is the privi-
lege of our nature that every man should keep
the key of his own breast. SOUTH.
If a man accustoms himself to slight those
first motions to good, or shrinkings of his con-
science from evil, conscience will by degrees
grow dull and unconcerned. SOUTH.
All resistance of the dictates of conscience
brings a hardness and stupefaction upon it.
SOUTH.
No honour, no fortune, can keep a man from
being miserable when an enraged conscience
shall fly at him, and take him by the throat.
SOUTH.
The testimony of a good conscience will
make the comforts of heaven descend upon
man's weary head like a refreshing dew or
shower upon a parched land. It will give him
lively earnests and secret anticipations of ap-
proaching joy ; it will bid his soul go out of the
body undauntedly, and lift up his head with
confidence before saints and angels. The com-
fort which it conveys is greater than the capaci-
ties of mortality can appreciate, mighty and un-
speakable, and not to be understood till it is felt.
SOUTH.
A palsy may as well shake an oak, or a fever
dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry
up, or impair the delight of conscience. For it
lies within, it centres in the heart, it grows into
the very substance of the soul, so that it accom-
panies a man to his grave, he never outlives it;
and that for this cause only, because he cannot
outlive himself. SOUTH.
It is not necessary for a man to be assured of
the righteousness of his conscience by such an
infallible certainty of persuasion as amounts to
the clearness of a demonstration; but it is suffi-
cient if he knows it upon grounds of such a
probability as shall exclude all rational grounds
of doubting. SOUTH.
Were men so enlightened and studious of
their own good, as to act by the dictates of their
reason and reflection, and not the opinion of
others, conscience would be the steady ruler of
human life; and the words truth, law, reason,
equity, and religion, could be but synonymous
terms for that only guide which makes us pass
our days in our own favour and approbation.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 48.
It is necessary to any easy and happy life, to
possess our minds in such a manner as to be
always well satisfied with our own reflections.
The way to this state is to measure our actions
by our own opinion, and not by that of the rest
of the world. The sense of other men ought
CONSISTENCY. CONSTANCY. CONTEMPLA TION. 1 2 7
to prevail over us in things of less consideration,
but not in concerns where truth and honour are
engaged. SlR R. STEELE :
Taller, No. 251.
No word more frequently in the mouths of
men than conscience; and the meaning of it is,
in some measure, understood : however, it is a
word extremely abused by many who apply other
meanings to it which God Almighty never in-
tended. SWIFT.
Conscience signifies that knowledge which a
man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and
because if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by
comparing them with the law of God, his mind
will approve or condemn him, this knowledge or
conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.
SWIFF.
God is present in the consciences of good and
bad : he is there a remembrancer to call our ac-
tions to mind, and a witness to bring them to
judgment. JEREMY TAYLOR.
What is called by the Stoics apathy or dis-
passion [is called] by the Sceptics indisturbance,
by the Molinists quietism, by common men
peace of conscience. SIR W. TEMPLE.
Methinks though a man had all science and
all principles yet it might not be amiss to have
some conscience. TILLOTSON.
What comfort does overflow the devout soul
from a consciousness of its own innocence and
integrity ! TlLLOTSON.
The most sensual man that ever was in the
world never felt so delicious a pleasure as a
good conscience. TILLOTSON.
He that loses his conscience has nothing left
that is worth keeping. Therefore be sure you
look to that. And in the next place, look to
your health; and if you have it, praise God, and
value it next to a good conscience; for health is
the second blessing that we mortals are capable
of; a blessing that money cannot buy; therefore
value it, and be thankful for it.
IZAAK WALTON.
Conscientious sincerity is friendly to tolerance,
as latitudinarian indifference is to intolerance.
WHATELY.
As science means knowledge, conscience ety-
tnologically means self-knowledge. . . . But the
English word implies a moral standard of action
in the mind, as well as a consciousness of our
own actions. . . . Conscience is the reason em-
ployed about questions of right and wrong, and
accompanied with the sentiments of approbation
and condemnation. WHEWELL.
CONSISTENCY.
This mode of arguing from your having done
any thing in a certain line to the necessity of
doing every thing has political consequences of
other moment than those of a logical fallacy.
BURKE:
Appeal from the New to thl Old Whigs, 1791.
One who wishes to preserve consistency, but
who would preserve consistency by varying his
means to secure the unity of his end.
BURKE.
Steady to my principles, and not dispirited
with my afflictions, I have, by the blessing of
God on my endeavours, overcome all difficulties;
and, in some measure, acquitted myself of the
debt which I owed the public when I undertook
this work. DRYUEN.
This discovers to us the expedient of a steadi-
ness and consistency of conduct, and rendeis
the having willed a thing a motive with us to
will it still, until some cogent reason shall occur
to the contrary. A. TUCKER.
Another of these pretenders to being, or
being thought to be, wise, prides himself on
what he calls his consistency, on his never
changing his opinions or plans ; which, as long
as man is fallible, and circumstances change, is
the wisdom of one either too dull to detect his
mistakes, or too obstinate to own them.
WHATELY:
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Seeming Wise.
It is a mere idle declamation about consist-
ency to represent it as a disgrace to a man to
confess himself wiser to-day than yesterday.
WHATELY.
CONSTANCY.
I must confess, there is something in the
changeableness and inconstancy of human na-
ture that very often both dejects and terrifies
me. Whatever I am at present, I tremble to
think what I may be. While I find this principle,
how can I assure myself that I shall be always
true to my God, my friend, or myself? In short,
without constancy there is neither love, friend-
ship, nor virtue in the world. ADDISON.
How much happier is he who . . . remait.s
immovable, and smiles at the madness of the
dance about him ! DRYDEN.
It is not to be imagined how far constancy
will carry a man ; however, it is better walking
slowly in a rugged way than to break a leg and
be a cripple. LOCKE.
The lasting and crowning privilege, or rather
property, of friendship is constancy.
SOUTH.
Constancy is such a stability and firmness of
friendship as overlooks and passes by lesser fail-
ures of kindness, and yet still retains the same
habitual good will to a friend. SOUTH.
CONTEMPLATION.
There is a sweet pleasure in contemplation.
All others grow flat and insipid on frequent use;
and when a man hath run through a set of
vanities in the declension of his age, he knows
not whit to do with himself, if he cannot think.
SIR T. P. BLOUNT.
1 28 CONTEMPLA TION. CONTEMPT. CONTENTMENT.
Contemplative men may be without the pleas-
ure of discovering the secrets of state, and men
of action are commonly without the pleasure of
tracing the secrets of divine art.
GREW: Cosmologia.
Contemplation is keeping the idea which is
brought into the mind, for some time actually in
view. LOCKE.
So many kinds of creatures might be to ex-
ercise the contemplative faculty of man.
RAY : On the Creation.
There are two functions, contemplation and
practice, according to the general division of
objects ; some of which entertain our specu-
lation, others employ our actions. SOUTH.
There is not much difficulty in confining the
mind to contemplate what we have a great de-
sire to know. DR. I. WATTS.
Conceive of things clearly and distinctly, in
their own nature; conceive of things completely,
in all their parts; conceive of things compre-
hensively, in all their properties and relations;
conceive of things extensively, in all their
kinds ; conceive of things orderly, or in a proper
method. DR. I. WATTS.
CONTEMPT.
Nothing, says Longinus, can be great, the
contempt of which is great. ADDISON.
Contempt putteth an edge upon anger more
than the hurt itself; and when men are in-
genious in picking out circumstances of con-
tempt, they do kindle their anger much.
LORD BACON.
Every man is not ambitious, or covetous, or
passionate ; but every man has pride enough in
his composition to feel and resent the least slight
and contempt. Remember, therefore, most care-
fully to conceal your contempt, however just,
wherever you would not make an implacable
enemy. Men are much more unwilling to have
their weaknesses and their imperfections known
than their crimes; and if you hint to a man that
you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill bred,
or awkward, he will hate you more and longer
than if you tell him plainly that you think him
a rogue. LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Sept. 5, 1748.
It is often more necessary to conceal contempt
than resentment; the former being never for-
given, but the latter sometimes forgot.
LORD CHESTERFIELD.
There is no action in the behaviour of one
man towards another of which human nature is
more impatient than of contempt; it being an
undervaluing of a man upon a belief of his
utter uselessness and inability, and a spiteful
endeavour to engage the rest of the world in
the same slight esteem of him. SOUTH.
Nothing can be a reasonable ground of
despising a man but some fault chargeable upon
him; and nothing can be a fault that is not
naturally in a man's power to prevent : other-
wise it is a man's unhappiness, his mischance
or calamity, but not his fault. SOUTH.
CONTENTMENT.
This virtue [content] does indeed produce,
in some measure, all those effects which the
alchymist usually ascribes to what he calls the
philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring
riches, it does the same thing, by banishing the
desire of them. If it cannot remove the dis-
quietudes arising out of a man's mind, body, or
fortune, it makes him easy under them. It has
indeed a kindly influence on the soul of man
in respect of every being to whom he stands
related. It extinguishes all murmur, repining,
and ingratitude towards that Being who has
allotted to him his part to act in this world.
It destroys all inordinate ambition, and every
tendency to corruption, with regard to the com-
munity wherein he is placed. It gives sweetness
to his conversation, and a perpetual serenity to
all his thoughts. Among the many methods
which might be made use of for the acquiring
of this virtue, I shall mention the two follow-
ing: First of all, a man should always consider
how much he has more than he wants; and
secondly, how much more unhappy he might be
than he really is.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 574.
Contentment is a pearl of great price, and
whoever procures it at the expense of ten thou-
sand desires makes a wise and a happy pui-
chase. J. BALGUY.
He that would live at ease should rvlways put
the best construction on business and converts,-
tion. JEREMY COLLIER.
As for a little more money and a little more
time, why it's ten to one if either one or the
other would make you a whit happier. If you
had more time, it would be sure to hang heavily.
It is the working man is the happy man. Man
was made to he active, and he is never so happy
as when he is so. It is the idle man is the
miserable man. What comes of holidays, and
far too often of sight-seeing, but evil ? Half
the harm that happens is on those days. And
as for money Don't you remember the old
saying, " Enough is as good as a feast ?"
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will
it. There is nothing in its nature to produce
happiness. The more a man has, the more he
wanfs. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes
one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and
trebles that want another way. That was a true
proverb of the wise man, rely upon it : " Better
is little with the fear of the Lord than great
treasure, and trouble therewith."
BENJ. FRANKLIN.
CONTENTMENT. CONTR O VERS Y.
Man doth not seem to rest satisfied either
with fruition of that wherewith his life is pre-
served, or with performance of such actions as
advance him most deservedly in estimation.
HOOKER.
When the best things are not possible, the
best may be made of those that are.
HOOKER.
He is happy whose circumstances suit his
temper; but he is more excellent who can suit
his temper to any circumstances.
HUME.
It is justly remarked by Horace, that howso-
ever every man may complain occasionally of the
hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing
to change it for any other on the same level ;
for whether it be that he who follows an em-
ployment made choice of it at first on account
of its suitableness to his inclination ; or that
when accident, or the determination of others,
have placed him in a particular station, he, by
endeavouring to reconcile himself to it, gets the
custom of viewing it only on. the fairest side;
or whether every man thinks that class to which
he belongs the most illustrious, merely because
he has honoured it with his name ; it is certain
that, whatever be the reason, most men have a
veiy strong and active prejudice in favour of
their own vocation, always working upon their
minds, and influencing their behaviour.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 9.
The indolency we have sufficing for our pres-
ent happiness, we desire not to venture the
Change ; being content; and that is enough.
LOCKE.
The highest point outward things can bring
one unto is the contentment of the mind, with
which no estate is miserable.
SIR P. SIDNEY.
It is not for man to rest in absolute content-
ment. He is born to hopes and aspirations, as
the sparks fly upwards, unless he has brutified
his nature, and quenched the spirit of immor-
tality which is his portion. SOUTHEY.
When the mind has been perplexed with
anxious cares and passions, the best method of
bringing it to its usual state of tranquillity is, as
much as we possibly can, to turn our thoughts
to the adversities of persons of higher consid-
eration in virtue and merit than ourselves. By
this means all the little incidents of our own
lives, if they are unfortunate, seem to be the
eflect of justice upon our faults and indiscre-
tions. When those whom we know to be ex-
cellent, and deserving of a better fate, are
wretched, we cannot but resign ourselves, whom
most of us know to merit a much worse state
than that we are placed in.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 233.
There are thousands so extravagant in their
ideas of contentment as to imagine that it must
cmsist in having everything in this world turn
9
out the way they wish that they are to sit down
in happiness, and feel themselves so at ease on
all points as to desire nothing better and nothing
more. I own there are instances of some who
seem to pass through the world as if all their
paths had been strewed with rosebuds of delight ;
but a little experience will convince us 'tis a
fatal expectation to go upon. We are " born to
trouble ;" and we may depend upon it whilst we
live in this world w,e shall have it, though with
intermissions ; that is, in whatever state we
are, we shall find a mixture of good and evil ;
and therefore the true way to contentment is to
know how to receive these certain vicissitudes
of life, the returns of good and evil, so as
neither to be exalted by the one nor overthrown
by the other, but to bear ourselves towards
everything which happens with such ease and
indifference of mind, as to hazard as little as
may be. This is the true temperate climate
fitted for us by nature, and in which every wise
man would wish to live. STERNE.
There is scarce any lot so low but there is
something in it to satisfy the man whom it has
befallen ; Providence having so ordered things
that in every man's cup, how bitter soever, there
are some cordial drops some good circum-
stances, which, if wisely extracted, are suffi-
cient for the purpose he wants them that is,
to make him contented, and, if not happy, at
least resigned. STERNE.
A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred be-
fore a troubled superfluity.
SIR J. SUCKLING.
To secure a contented spirit, measure your
desires by your fortunes, and not your fortunes
by your desires. JEREMY TAYLOR.
It conduces much to our content, if we pass
by those things which happen to our trouble, and
consider that which is prosperous ; that by the
representation of the better, the worse may be
blotted out. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Submission is the only reasoning between a
creature and its Maker, and contentment in his
will is the best remedy we can apply to misfor-
tunes. SIR W. TEMPLE.
That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed,
in which we can say, " I have enough," is the
highest attainment of philosophy. Happiness
consists, not in possessing much, but in being
content with what we possess. He who wants
little always has enough. ZIMMERMANN.
CONTROVERSY.
The universities of Europe, for many years,
carried on their debates by syllogism, insomuch
that we see the knowledge of several centuries
laid out into objections and answers, and all the
good sense of the age cut and minced into al-
most an infinitude of distinctions.
When our universities found there was no end
CONTROVERSY.
of wrangling this way, they invented a kind of
argument, which is not reducible to any mood
or figure in Aristotle. It was called the Argu-
mentum Basil inum (others write it Bacilinum or
Baculinum), which is pretty well expressed in our
English word club-law. When they were not
able to refute their antagonist, they knocked him
down. It was their method, in these polemical
debates, first to discharge their syllogisms, and
afterwards betake themselves to their clubs, until
such time as they had one way or other con-
founded their gainsayers.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 239.
Mr. Bayle compares the answering of an im-
methodical author to the hunting of a duck :
when you have him full in your sight, he gives
you the slip and becomes invisible.
ADDISON.
He is perpetually puzzled and perplexed
amidst his own blunders, and mistakes the sense
of those he would confute. ADDISON.
The harshness of reasoning is not a little soft-
ened and smoothed by the effusions of mirth
and pleasantry. ADDISON.
To think everything disputable is a proof of
a weak mind and captious temper.
BEATTIE.
The captious turn of an habitual wrangler
deadens the understanding, sours the temper, and
hardens the heart. BEATTIE.
I cannot fall out, or contemn a man for an
error, or conceive why a difference in opinion
should divide an affection: for controversies,
disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy
and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and
peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of
charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of
passion so much there is of nothing to the pur-
pose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends
upon a false scent, and forsakes the question
first started. And this is one reason why con-
troversies are never determined : for though
they be amply proposed they are scarce at all
handled, they do so swell with unnecessary di-
gressions : and the parenthesis on the party is
often as large as the main discourse upon the
subject. SIR T. BROWNE.
In order to keep that temper which is so dif-
ficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may
please to consider, that nothing can be more
unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with an-
other because he is not of your opinion. The
interests, education, and means by which men
attain their knowledge, are so very different,
that it is impossible they should all think alike ;
and he has at least as much reason to be angry
with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep
yourself cool, it may be of service to ask your-
self fairly, what might have been your opinion,
had you all the biassesof education and interest
your adversary may possibly have?
BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 197.
Avoid as much as you can, in mixed com-
panies, argumentative, polemical conversations;
which, though they should not, yet certainly do,
indispose for a time the contending parties to-
wards each other : and if the controversy grows
warm and noisy, endeavour to put an end to it
by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such
a conversation hubbub once by representing to
them that, though I was persuaded none there
present would repeat out of company what
passed in it, yet I could not answer for the dis-
cretion of the passengers in the street, who must
necessarily hear all that was said.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Oct. 19, 1748.
Men of many words sometimes argue for the
sake of talking; men of ready tongues frequently
dispute for the sake of victory ; men in public
life often debate for the sake of opposing the
ruling party, or from any other motive than the
love of truth. CRABB : Synonymes.
The precipitancy of disputation, and the stir
and noise of passions that usually attend it, must
needs be prejudicial to verity : its calm insinua-
tions can no more be heard in such a bustle than
a whistle among a crowd of sailors in a storm.
GLANVILL.
The sparks of truth being forced out of con-
tention, as the sparks of fire out of the collision
of flint and steel. HAKEWILL.
However some may affect to dislike contro-
versy, it can never be of ultimate disadvantage
to the interests of truth or the happiness of man-
kind. Where it is indulged to its full extent, a
multitude of ridiculous opinions will no doubt
be obtruded upon the public ; but any ill influ-
ence they may produce cannot continue long, as
they are sure to be opposed with at least equal
ability and that superior advantage which is
ever attendant on truth. The colours with which
wit or eloquence may have adorned a fdlse
system will gradually die away, sophistry be
detected, and everything estimated at length
according to its value. ROBERT HALL :
On the Right of Public Discussion.
Suspense of judgment and exercise of charity
were safer and seemlier for Christian men than
the hot pursuit of these controversies.
HOOKER.
It is impossible to fall into any company where
there is not some regular and established subor-
dination, without finding rage and vehemerce
produced only by difference of sentiments about
things in which neither of the disputants have
any other interest, than what proceeds from their
mutual unwillingness to give way to any opinion
that may bring upon them the disgrace of being
wrong.
I have heard of one that, having advanced
some erroneous doctrines of philosophy, refused
to see the experiments by which they were con-
futed.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 31.
CONTROVERSY.
It is almost always the unhappiness of a vic-
torious disputant, to destroy his own authority
by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing
his proposition to an indefensible extent. When
we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated
our confidence with success, we are naturally
inclined to pursue the same train of reasoning,
to establish some collateral truth, to remove
some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the
whole comprehension of our system.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 66.
Akenside was a young man, warm with every
notion connected with liberty, and, by an eccen-
tricity which such dispositions do not easily
avoid, a lover of contradiction.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
Consider what the learning of disputation is,
and how they are employed for the advantage
of themselves or others whose business is only
the vain ostentation of sounds. LOCKE.
Amongst men who examine not scrupulously
their own ideas, and strip them not from the
marks men use for them, but confound them
with words, there must be endless dispute.
LOCKE.
I am yet apt to think that men find their sim-
ple ideas agree, though in discourse -they con-
found one another with different names.
LOCKE.
Hunting after arguments to make good one
side of a question, and wholly to neglect those
which favour the ether, is wilfully to misguide
the understanding; and is so far from giving
truth its due value, that it wholly debases it.
LOCKE.
If we consider the mistakes in men's disputes
and notions, how great a part is owing to words,
and their uncertain or mistaken significations :
this we are the more carefully to be warned of,
because the arts of improving it have been made
the business of men's study. LOCKE.
This exactness is absolutely necessary in in-
quiries after philosophical knowledge, and in
controversies about truth. LOCKE.
There is no such way to give defence to
absurd doctrines, as to guard them round about
with legions of obscure and undefined words;
which yet make these retreats more like the
dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than the fort-
resses of fair warriors. LOCKE.
It happens in controversial discourses as it
does in the assaulting of towns, where, if the
ground be but firm whereon the batteries are
erected, there is no farther enquiry whom it
belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the
present purpose. LOCKE.
A way that men ordinarily use to force others
to submit to their judgments, and receive their
opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to
admit what they allege as a proof, or to assign
LOCKE.
Men that do not perversely use their words,
or on purpose set themselves to cavil, seldom
mistake the signification of the names of simple
ideas. LOCKK.
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 estab-
lished. 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 leach
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 an implicit truth. MlLTON.
Having newly left those grammatic shallows,
where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few
words, on the sudden are transported to be tost
and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in
fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy.
MILTON.
What Tully says of war may be applied to
disputing, it should be always so managed as
to remember that the only true end of it is
peace : but generally true disputants are like
true sportsmen, their whole delight is in the
pursuit ; and a disputant no more cares for the
truth than the sportsman for the hare.
POPE : Thoughts on Various Subjects*
The like censurings and despisings have em-
bittered the spirift, and whetted both the tongues
and pens, of learned men one against another.
SANDERSON.
It is very unfair in any writer to employ igno-
rance and malice together; because it gives his
answerer double work. SWIFT.
It will happen continually that rightly to dis-
tinguish between two words will throw great
light upon some controversy in which words
play a principal part ; nay, will virtually put an
end to that controversy altogether.
R. C. TRENCH.
Disputation carries away the mind from thar
calm and sedate temper which is so necessary
to contemplate truth. DR. I. WATTS.
Young students, by a constant habit of dis-
puting, grow impudent and audacious, proud
and disdainful. DR. I. WATTS.
A spirit of contradiction is so pedantic and
hateful that a man should watch against every
instance of it. DR. I. WATTS.
A person of a whiffing and unsteady turn of
mind cannot keep close to a point of contro-
versy, but wanders from it perpetually.
DR. I. WATTS.
When the state of the controversy is plainly
determined, it must not be altered by another
disputant in the course of the disputation.
DR. I. WAITS.
I 3 2
CONTR O VERSY. CON VERSA TION.
It is to diffuse a light over the understanding,
in our enquiries after truth, and not to furnish
the tongue with debate and controversy.
DR. I. WATTS.
Controversy, though always an evil in itself,
is sometimes a necessary evil. To give up
everything worth contending about, in order to
prevent hurtful contentions, is, for the sake of
extirpating noxious weeds, to condemn the field
to perpetual sterility. Yet, if the principle that
it is an evil only to be incurred when necessary
for the sake of some important good, were acted
upon, the two classes of controversies mentioned
by Bacon would certainly be excluded. The
first, controversy on subjects too deep and mys-
terious, is indeed calculated to gender strife.
For, in a case where correct knowledge is im-
possible to any and where all are, in fact, in the
wrong, there is but little likelihood of agree-
ment : like. men who should rashly venture to
explore a strange land in utter darkness, they
will be scattered into a thousand devious paths.
The second class of subjects that would be ex-
cluded by this principle, are those which relate
to matters too minute and trifling.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon 1 s Essay , Of Unity in
Religion.
CONVERSATION.
Conversation, like the Romish religion, was
so .encumbered with show and ceremony, that it
stood in need of a reformation to retrench its
superfluities, and restore it to its natural good
sense and beauty. At present, therefore, an
unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness
of behaviour, are the height of good breeding.
The fashionable world is grown free and easy;
0-ur manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing
is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a
word, good breeding shows itself most, where
to an ordinary eye it appears the least.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 119.
Conversation with men of a polite genius is
another method for improving our natural taste.
It is impossible for a man of the greatest parts
to consider anything in its whole extent, and in
all of its variety of lights. -Every man, besides
those general observations which are to be made
upon an author, forms several reflections that
are peculiar to his own manner of thinking; so
that conversation will naturally furnish us with
hints which we did not attend to, and make us
enjoy other men's parts and reflections as well
as our own.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 409.
Method is not less requisite in ordinary con-
versation than in .writing, provided a man would
talk to make himself understood. I who hear a
thousand coffee-house debates everyday, am very
sensible of this w?nt of method in the thoughts
of my honest countryman. There is not one di ; -
pute in ten which is managed in those schools
of politics, where, after the three first sentences,
the question is not entirely lost. Our disputants
put me in mind of the scuttle-fish, that, when he
is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the
water about him until he becomes invisible.
The man who does not know how to methodize
his thoughts, has always, to borrow a phrase from
the Dispensary, " a barren superfluity of words :"
the fruit is lost amidst the exuberance of leaves.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 476.
The superiority of Sir James Mackintosh to
Jeffrey in conversation was then very manifest.
His ideas succeeded each other much more rap-
idly ; his expressions were more brief and terse,
his repartee most felicitous. Jeffrey's great
talent consisted in amplification and illustration,
and there he was eminently great; and he had
been accustomed to Edinburgh society, where
he had been allowed by his admiring auditors,
male and female, to prelect and expand ad libi-
tum. Sir James had not greater quickness of
mind, for nothing could exceed Jeffrey in that
respect, but much greater power of condensed
expression, and infinitely more rapidity in chang-
ing the subject of conversation. " Tout toucher,
rien approfondir" was his practice, as it is of
all men in whom the real conversational talent
exists, and where it has been trained to per-
fection by frequent collision, in polished society,
with equal or superior men and elegant and
charming women. Jeffrey, in conversation, was
like a skilful swordsman flourishing his weapon
in the air; while Mackintosh, with a thin, sharp
rapier, in the middle of his evolutions, ran him
through the body. SIR A. ALISON :
History of Europe, 1815-1852.
Some in their discourse desire rather com-
mendation of wit, in being able to hold all argu-
ments, than of judgment, in discerning what is
true ; as if it were a praise to know what might
be said, and not what should be thought. Some
have certain common-places and themes, wherein
they are good, and want variety ; which kind of
poverty is for the most part tedious; and, when
it is once perceived, ridiculous.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXX III., Of Discourse.
He that questioneth much shall learn much,
and content much ; but especially if he apply
his questions to the skill of the persons whom
he asketh ; for he shall give them occasion to
please themselves in speaking, and himself shall
continually gather knowledge : but let his ques-
tions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a
poser ; and let him be sure to leave other men
their turns to speak : nay, if there be any that
would reign and take up all the time, let him
find, means to take them off, and to bring others
on ; as musicians use to do with those that dance
too long galliards. . . . Discretion of speech is
more than eloquence ; and to speak agreeable to
him with whom we deal, is more than to spe;ik
in good words, or in good order.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXXI IL, Of Discourse.
CONVERSATION.
Whosoever hath his mind fraught with many
thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify
and break up in the communicating and dis-
coursing with another; he marshalleth his
thoughts more orderly, he seeth how they look
when they are turned into words.
LORD BACON.
Such facetiousness is not unreasonable or un-
lawful which ministereth harmless divertisement
and delight to conversation ; harmless, I say,
that is, not intrenching upon piety, nor infringing
charity or justice, not disturbing peace. For
Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envi-
ous, as to bar us continually from innocent, much
less from wholesome and useful, pleasure, such
as human life doth need or require. And if joc-
ular discourse may serve to good purposes of
this kind ; if it may be apt to raise our drooping
spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our
olunted industry, to recreate our minds, being
tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it
may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour
among us ; if it may conduce to sweeten conver-
sation and endear society, then it is not incon-
venient or unprofitable. If for these ends we
m?y use other recreations, employing on them
our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other
instruments of sense and motion, why may we
not so well accommodate our organs of speech
and interior sense ? Why should those games
which excite our wit and fancies be less reason-
able, since they are performed in a manly way,
and have in them a smack of reason ; seeing,
also, they may be so managed as not only to
divert and please, but to improve and profit the
mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes
enlightening and instructing it, by good sense,
conveyed in jocular expression ? BARROW.
If anything in my conversation has merited
your regard, I think it must be the openness and
freedom with which I commonly express my
sentiments. You are too wise a man not to
know that such freedom is not without its use;
and that by encouraging it, men of true ability
are enabled to profit by hints thrown out by un-
derstandings much inferior to their own, and
which they who first produce them are, by them-
" yes, unable to turn to the best account.
BURKE:
To the Conite de Mercey, Aug. 1793.
Tasso's conversation was neither gay nor bril-
liant. Dante was either taciturn or satirical.
Butler was sullen or biting. Gray seldom talked
or smiled. Hogarth and Swift were very absent-
minded in company. Milton was unsociable,
and even irritable, when pressed into conversa-
tion. Kirwan, though copious and eloquent in
puMic addresses, was meagre and dull in collo-
quial discourse. Virgil was heavy in conversa-
tion. La Fontaine appeared heavy, coarse, and
stupid; he could not describe what he had just
seen ; but then he was the model of poetry.
Chaucer's silence was more agreeable than his
conversation. Dryden's conversation was slow
and dull, his humour saturnine and reserved.
Corneille in conversation was so insipid that he
never failed in wearying : he did not evt n speak
correctly that language of which he wa such a
master. Ben Jonson used to sit silent in com-
pany and suck his wine and their humours
Southey was stiff, sedate, and wrapped up in
asceticism. Addison was good company with
his intimate friends, but in mixed company he
preserved his dignity by a stiff and reserved
silence. Fox in conversation never flagged ; his
animation and variety were inexhaustible. Dr.
Bentley was loquacious. Grotius was talkative.
Goldsmith " wrote like an angel, and talked like
poor Poll." Burke was eminently entertaining,
enthusiastic, and interesting in conversation.
Curran was a convivial deity: he soared into
every region, and was at home in all. Dr. Birch
dreaded a pen as he did a torpedo ; but he could
talk like running water. Dr. Johnson wrote
monotonously and ponderously, but in conversa-
tion his words were close and sinewy ; and " if
his pistol missed fire, he knocked down his an-
tagonist with the butt of it." Coleridge in his
conversation was full of acuteness and origi-
nality. Leigh Hunt has been well termed the
philosopher of hope, and likened to a pleasant
stream in conversation. Carlyle doubts, objects,
and constantly demurs. Fisher Ames was a
powerful and effective orator, and not the less
distinguished in the social circle. He possessed
a fluent language, a vivid fancy, and a well-
stored memory. A. W. CHAMBERS.
One must be extremely exact, clear, and per-
spicuous in everything one says; otherwise, in-
stead of entertaining or informing others, one
only tires and puzzles them. The voice and
manner of speaking, too, are not to be neglected ;
some people almost shut their mouths when they
speak, and mutter so, that they are not to be
understood ; others speak so fast and sputter that
they are not to be understood neither; some
always speak as loud as if they were talking to
deaf people, and others so low that one cannot
hear them. All these habits are awkward and
disagreeable; and are to be avoided by attention :
they are the distinguishing marks of the ordinary
people, who have had no care taken of their
education. You cannot imagine how necessary
it is to mind all these little things; for I have
seen many people, with great talents, ill received,
for want of having these talents too ; and others
well received, only from their little talents, and!
who had no great ones.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, July 25, A r . S., 1791.
When you find your antagonist beginning to *
grow warm, put an end to the dispute by some
genteel badinage. LORD CHESTERFIELD.
The advantage of conversation is such that,
for want of company, a man had better talk to a
post than let his thoughts lie smoking and
smothering. JEREMY COLLIER.
Conversation is the music of the mind ; an
intel'ectual orchestra, where all ihe instruments
34
CONVERSA TION.
should bear a part, but where none should play
together. Each of the performers should have
a just appreciation of his own powers; other
wise an unskilful noviciate, who might usurp the
first fiddle, would infallibly get into a scrape.
To prevent these mistakes, a good master of the
band will be very particular in the assortment of
the performers : if too dissimilar there will be no
harmony, if too few there will be no variety,
and if too numerous there will be no order: for
the presumption of one prater might silence the
eloquence of a Burke, or the wit of a Sheridan ;
as a single kettledrum would drown the finest
solo of a Gioniwich or a Jordini.
COLTON : Lacon.
It has been well observed that the tongue dis-
cY'vers the state of the mind no less than that
01' the body ; but in either case, before the phi-
losopher or the physician can judge, the patient
must open his mouth, Sorae men envelope
themselves in such an impenetrable cloak of
silence, that the tongue will afford us no symp-
toms of the temperament of the mind. Such
Taciturnity, indeed, is wise if they are fools, but
foolish if they are wise ; and the only method
to form a judgment of these mutes is narrowly
to observe when, where, and how they smile.
It shows much more stupidity to be grave at a
good thing than to be merry at a bad one ; and
of all ignorance that which is silent is the least
productive ; for praters may suggest an idea, if
they cannot start one. COLTON : Lacon.
Were we as eloquent as angels, yet should we
please some men, some women, and some chil-
dren much more by listening than by talking.
COLTON : Lacon.
We have fixed our view on those uses of con-
versation which are ministerial to intellectual
culture. DE QUINCEY.
It was not by an insolent usurpation that Cole-
ridge persisted in monology through his whole
Jife. DE QUINCEY.
There are certain garbs and modes of speak-
ing which vary with the times ; the fashion of
our clothes being not more subject to alteration
than that of our speech. SIR J. DENHAM.
Struck in two instances, with the immense
importance, to a man of sense, of obtaining a
Conversational predominance in order to be of
any use in any company exceeding the smallest
number. JOHN FOSTER : Journal.
Conversation warms the mind, enlivens the
imagination, and is continually starting fresh
game that is immediately pursued and taken, and
which would never have occurred in the duller
intercourse of epistolary correspondence.
BENJ. FRANKLIN :
Letter to Lord Kames : Sparkfs Life
and Corresp. of Franklin.
The study of books is a languishing and feeble
motion, that heats not; whereas conference
teaches and exercises at once. If I confer with
an understanding man and a rude jester, he
presses hard upon me on both sides : his imagi-
nation raises up mine to more than ordinary pitch.
Jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and
raise me up to something above myself; and a
consent of judgment is a quality totally offensive
in conference. THOMAS FULLER
The Holy Slate and the Profane State.
Let your words be few, especially wl en your
superiors, or strangers, are present, lest you be-
tray your own weakness, and rob yourselves of
the opportunity which you might otherwise have
had, to gain knowledge, wisdom, and experi-
ence, by hearing those whom you silence by
your impertinent talking. . . . Be careful not to
interrupt another when he is speaking: hear
him out, and you will understand him the better,
and be able to give him the better answer.
SIR M. HALE.
It has been said that the Table-Talk of Sel-
den is worth all the Ana of the Continent. In
this I should be disposed to concur; but they
are not exactly works of the same class.
HALLAM : Lit. Hist.
They have nearly an equal range of reading
and of topics of conversation : but in the mind
of the one we see nothing but Jixtures ; in the
other everything is fluid. The ideas of the one
are as formal and tangible as those of the other
are shadowy and evanescent. Sir James Mack-
intosh walks over the ground ; Mr. Coleridge is
always flying off from it. The first knows all
that has been said upon a subject ; the last has
something to say that was never said before.
. . . The conversation of Sir James Mackintosh
has the effect of reading a well-written book ;
that of his friend is like hearing a bewildering
dream. The one is an encyclopaedia of knowl-
edge ; the other is a succession of Sibylline
leaves. WILLIAM HAZLITT :
Spirit of the Age.
That conversation may answer the ends for
which it was designed, the parties who are to
join in it must come together with a determined
resolution to please and to be pleased. If a
man feels that an east wind has rendered him
dull and sulky, he should by all means stay at
home till the wind changes, and not be trouble-
some to his friends : for dulness is infectious,
and one sour face will make many, as one cheer-
ful countenance is productive of others. If two
gentlemen desire to quarrel, it should not be
done in a company met to enjoy the pleasures
of conversation.
BISHOP GEORGE HORNE :
Olla Podrida, No. 7.
We hear a great deal of lamentation nowa-
days, proceeding mostly from elderly people, on
the decline of the Art of Conversation among us.
Old ladies and gentlemen, with vivid recollec-
tions of the charms of society fifty years ago, are
constantly asking each other why the great
talkers of their youthful days have found no
successors in this inferior present time. Where
CONVERSATION.
'35
they inquire mournfully where are the illus-
trious men and women gifted with a capacity
for perpetual outpouring from the tongue, who
used to keep enraptured audiences deluged in a
flow of eloquent monologue for hours together?
Where are the solo talkers in this degenerate
age of nothing but choral conversation ? Em-
balmed in social tradition, or imperfectly pre-
served in books for the benefit of an ungrateful
posterity, which reviles their surviving contem-
poraries, and would perhaps even have reviled
them, as Bores.
Household Words, Oct. 25, 1856.
What a change seems indeed to have passed
\er the face of society since the days of the
great talkers ! If they could rise from the dead,
and wag their unresting tongues among us now,
would they win their reputations anew, just as
easily as ever ? Would they even get listeners ?
Would they be actually allowed to talk? I
should venture to say, decidedly not. They
would surely be interrupted and contradicted ;
they would have their nearest neighbours at the
dinner-table talking across them ; they would
find impatient people opposite, dropping things
noisily, and ostentatiously picking them up;
they would hear confidential whispering and
perpetual fidgeting in distant corners, before
they had got through their first half-dozen of
eloquent opening sentences. Nothing appears
to me so wonderful as that none of these inter-
ruptions (if we are to believe report) should
ever have occurred in the good old times of
the great talkers.
Household Words, Oct. 25, 1856.
Mr. Spoke Wheeler is one of those men a
large class, as it appears to me who will talk,
and who have nothing whatever in the way of a
subject of their own to talk about. His constant
practice is to lie silently in ambush for subjects
started by other people, to take them forthwith
from their rightful owners, turn them coolly to
his own uses, and then cunningly wait again
for the next topic, belonging to somebody else,
that passes within his reach. It is useless to
give up, and leave him to take the lead he in-
variably gives up, too, and declines the honour.
It is useless to start once more, hopefully, seeing
him apparently silenced he becomes talkative
again the moment you offer him the chance of
seizing on your new subject disposes of it with-
out the slightest fancy, taste, or novelty of han-
dling, in a moment then relapses into utter
speechlessness as soon as he has silenced the
rest of the company by taking their topic away
from them.
Household Words, Oct. 25, 1856.
Mrs. Marblemug has one subject of conversa-
tion' her own vices. On all other topics she is
sarcastically indifferent and scornfully mute.
General conversation she consequently never in-
dulges in ; but the person who sits next to her
is sure to be interrupted as soon as he attracts
her attention by talking to her, by receiving a
confession of her vices : not made repentantly,
or confusedly, or jocularly but slowly de-
claimed with an ostentatious cynicism, with a
hard eye, a hard voice, a hard no, an adamant-
ine manner. In early youth, Mrs. Marblemug
discovered that her business in life was to be ec-
centric and disagreeable, and she is one of the
women of England who fulfils her mission.
Household Words, Oct. 25, 1856.
In all his productions the riches of his knowl-
edge and the subtlety and force of his under-
standing are alike conspicuous; but I am -not
sure whether his characteristic qualities did not
display themselves in a more striking way in hir-
conversation. It was here, at least, that his as-
tonishing memory astonishing equally for its
extent, exactness, and promptitude made the
greatest impression.
LORD JEFFREY :
On Sir James Mackintosh. : Mackintoshes Life.
Perhaps no kind of superiority is more flat-
tering or alluring than that which is conferred
by the powers of conversation, by extempora-
neous sprightliness of fancy, copiousness of Ian-
guage, and fertility of sentiment. In other ex-
ertions of genius the greater part of the praise
is unknown and unenjoyed : the writer, indeed,
spreads his reputation to a wider extent, but re r
ceives little pleasure or advantage from the dif-
fusion of his name, and only obtains a kind of
nominal sovereignty over regions which pay no
tribute. The colloquial wit has always his own
radiance reflected on himself, and enjoys all the
pleasure which he bestows ; he finds his power
confessed by every one that approaches him,
sees friendship kindling with rapture, and at-
tention swelling into praise.
The desire which every man feels of import
tance and esteem is so much gratified by finding
an assembly, at his entrance, brightened with
gladness, and hushed with expectation, that the
recollection of such distinctions can scarcely
fail to be pleasing whensoever it is innocent.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 101.
He that can only converse upon* questions
about which only a small part of mankind has
knowledge sufficient to make them curious, must
lose his days in unsocial silence, and live in the
crowd of life without a companion. He that
can only be useful on great occasions, may die
without exerting his abilities, and stand a help-
less spectator of a thousand vexations which fret
away happiness, and which nothing is required
to remove but a little dexterity of conduct and
readiness of expedients.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 137.
Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream
of talk is perpetual ; and he does not talk from
any desire of distinction, but because his mind
is full. . . . He is the only man whose common
conversation corresponds with the general fame
which he has'in the world. Take him up where
you please, he is ready to meet you. . . . No
man of sense could meet Burke by accident un-
der a gateway, to avoid a shower, without being
'36
CONFERS A TION.
convinced that he was the first man in England.
... If he should go into a stable, and talk a
few minutes with the hostlers about horses, they
would venerate him as the wisest of human
beings. They would say, " We have had an
extraordinary man here."
DR. S. JOHNSON:
BosweWs yohnson.
He that would please in company must be
attentive to what style is most proper. The
scholastic should never be used but in a select
company of learned men. The didactic should
seldom be used, and then only by judicious aged
persons, or those who are eminent for piety or
wisdom. No style is more extensively accept-
able than the narrative, because this does not
carry an air of superiority over the rest of the
company, and therefore is most likely to please
them : for this purpose we should store our
memory with short anecdotes and entertaining
pieces of history. Almost every one listens with
eagerness to extemporary history. Vanity often
co-operates with curiosity, for he that is a hearer
in one place wishes to qualify himself to be a
principal speaker in some inferior company, and
therefore more attention is given to narrations
than anything else in conversation. It is true,
indeed, that sallies of wit and quick replies are
very pleasing in conversation, but they frequently
tend to raise envy in some of the company ; but
the narrative way neither raises this, nor any
other evil passion, but keeps all the company
nearly on an equality, and, if judiciously man-
aged, will at once entertain and improve them
all. DR. S. JOHNSON.
To stated and public instruction he [Dr.
Watts] added familiar visits and personal ap-
plication, and was careful to improve the oppor-
tunities which conversation offered of diffusing
and increasing the influence of religion.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Life of Dr. I. Watts.
That is the happiest conversation where there
is no competition, no vanity, but only a calm,
quiet interchange of sentiment.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and
talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must
talk, say little. LA BRUYERE.
Before a man can speak on any subject it is
necessary to be acquainted with it. LOCKE.
He must be little skilled in the world who
thinks that men's talking much or little shall
hold proportion only to their knowledge.
LOCKE.
Whatever was valuable in the compositions
of Sir James Mackintosh was the ripe fruit of
s'.udy and meditation. It was the same with
his conversation. In his most familiar talk there
was no wildness, no inconsistency, no amusing
nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of mo-
mentary effect. His mind was a vast magazine
admirably arranged : everything was there, and
everything was in its place. His judgments on
men, on sects, on books, had been often and
carefully tested and weighed, and had then
been committed each to its proper receptacle in
the most capacious and accurately-constructed
memory that any human being ever possessed.
It would have been strange, indeed, if you had
asked for anything that was not to be found in
that immense warehouse. . . . You never saw
his opinions in the making, still rude, still in-
consistent, and requiring 'to be fashioned by
thought and discussion. They came forth, likr
the pillars of that temple in which no sound of
axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded
and exactly suited to their places.
LORD MACAULAY :
Sir James Mackintosh, July, 1835.
His [Goldsmith's] fame was great, and was
constantly rising. He lived in what was intel-
lectually far the best society of the kingdom, in
a society in which no talent or accomplishment
was wanting, and in which the art of conversa-
tion was cultivated with splendid success. There
probably were never four talkers more admira-
ble in four different ways than Johnson, Burke,
Beauclerc, and Garrick; and Goldsmith was on
terms of intimacy with all the four. He aspired
to share in their colloquial renown ; but never
was ambition more unfortunate. It may seem
strange that a man who wrote with so much
perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should have
been, whenever he took a part in conversation,
an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this
point the evidence is overwhelming.
LORD MACAULAY :
Life of Oliver Goldsmith, in JLncyc. Brit.
(Feb. 1856), 8lh edit.
But though his [Dr. S. Johnson's] pen was
now idle, his tongue was active. The influence
exercised by his conversation, directly upon
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on
the whole literary world, was altogether without
a parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed
of the highest order. He had strong sense,
quick discernment, wit, humour, immense
knowledge of literature and of life, and an in
finite store of curious anecdotes. As respected
style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every
sentence which dropped from his lips was as
correct in structure as the most nicely balanced
period of the Rambler. But in his talk there
were no pompous triads, and little more than a
fair proportion -of words i norland ation. AH
was simplicity, ease, and vigour. He uttered
his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with
a power of voice, and a justness and energy cf
emphasis, of which the effect was rather in-
creased than diminished by the rollings of hU
huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings in
which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him
unwilling to sit down to his desk prevent him
r rom giving instruction or entertainment orally.
To discuss questions of taste, of learning, of
casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible thai
t might have been printed without the alteration
of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleas-
CONVERSA TION.
'37
lire. He loved, as he said, to fold his legs and
have his talk out. lie was ready to bestow the
overflowings of his full mind on anybody who
would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in
a stage-coach, or on the person who sate at the
same table with him in an eating-house. But
his conversation was nowhere so brilliant and
striking as when he was surrounded by a few
friends whose abilities and knowledge enabled
them, as he once expressed it, to send him back
every ball that he threw.
LORD MACAULAY:
Life of Samuel Johnson, in Encyc. Brit.
(Dec, 1856), 8th edit.
I never met with any person whose conversa-
tion was at once so delightful and so instructive.
He possesses a vast quantity of well-arranged
knowledge, grace, and facility of expression, and
gentle and obliging manners. It would be hard
to find another person of equal talents and ac-
quirements so perfectly unassuming, or one so
ready to talk whose conversation was so well
worth listening to.
EARL OF DUDLEY :
On Sir James Mackintosh : Mackintosh's Life.
Conversation opens our views, and gives our
faculties a more vigorous play; it puts us upon
turning our notions on every side, and holds
them up to a light that discovers those latent
flaws which would probably have lain concealed
in the gloom of unagitated abstraction. Accord-
ingly, one may remark that most of those wild
doctrines which have been let loose upon the
world have generally owed their birth to persons
whose circumstances or dispositions have given
them the fewest opportunities of canvassing their
respective systems in the way of free and friendly
debate. Had the authors of many an extrava-
gant hypothesis discussed their principles in pri-
vate circles ere they had given vent to them in
public, the observation of Varro had never per-
haps been made (or never, at least, with so much
justice), that " there is no opinion so absurd but
has some philosopher or other to produce in its
support."
Upon this principle I imagine it is that some
of the finest pieces of antiquity are written in the
dialogue manner. Plato and Tully, it should
seem, thought truth could never be examined
with more advantage than amidst the amicable
opposition of well-regulated converse.
MELMOTH :
Letters oy Sir T. Fitzosborne.
It is probable, indeed, that subjects of a seri-
ous and philosophical kind were more frequently
the topics of Greek and Roman conversation
than they are of ours; as the circumstances of
the world had not yet given occasion to those
prudential reasons which may now perhaps re-
strain a more free exchange of sentiments
amongst us. There was something likewise in
the very scenes themselves where they usually
assembled that almost unavoidably turned the
stream of their conversations into this useful
channel. Their rooms and gardens were gen-
erally adorned, you know, with the statues of
the greatest masters of reason that had then ap-
peared in the world ; and while Socrates or
Aristotle stood in their view it is no wonder
their discourse fell upon those subjects which
such animating representations \\ould naturally
suggest. It is probable, therefore, that many of
those ancient pieces which are drawn up in the
dialogue manner were no imaginary conversa-
tions invented by their authors, but faithful Iran
scripts from real life. And it is this circumstance,
perhaps, as much as any other, which contributes
to give them that remarkable advantage over the
generality of modern compositions which have
been formed upon the same plan. I am sure, at
least, I could scarcely name more than three or
four of this kind which have appeared in our
language worthy of notice. My Lord Shaftes-
bury's dialogue entitled The Moralists, Mr. Ad-
dison's upon Ancient Coins, Mr. Spence's upon
the Odyssey, together with those of my very
ingenious friend Philemon to Hydaspes, are
almost the only productions in this way which
have hitherto come forth amongst us with advan-
tage. These, indeed, are all masterpieces of the
kind, and written in the true spirit of learning
and politeness. The conversation in each of
these most elegant performances is conducted,
not in the usual al>surd method of introducing
one disputant to be tamely silenced by the other,
but in the more lively dramatic manner, where
a just contrast of characters is preserved through-
out, and where the several speakers support
their respective sentiments with all the strength
and spirit of a well-bred opposition.
M ELMOTH :
Letters by Sir 7. Fitzosborne.
From grammatic flats and shallows they are
on the sudden transported to be tossed and Ulr-
moiled with their unballasted wits, in fathomless
and unquiet depths of controversy.
MILTON.
The conversation of Burke must have been
like the procession of a Roman triumph, exhib-
iting power and riches at every step, occasion-
ally, perhaps, mingling the low Fescennine jest
with the lofty music of its march, but glittering
all over with the spoils of the whole ransacked
world. T. MOORE :
Life of Sheridan, vol. ii. ch. iv.
Macaulay wonderful : never perhaps was there
combined so much talent with so marvellous a
memory. To attempt to record his conversation r
one must be as wonderfully gifted with memory
as himself. T. MOORE:
Memoirs, vol. vii.
Be humble and gentle in your conversation ,
of few words, I charge you, but always pert inert
when you speak, hearing out before you attempt
to answer, and then speaking as if you would
persuade, not impose. WILLIAM PENN:
Advice to his Children.
There is nothing so delightful as the hearing
or the speaking of truth. For this reason theie
138
CONFERS A TION.
is no conversation so agreeable as that of the
man of integrity, who hears without any inten-
tion to betray, and speaks without any intention
to deceive. PLATO.
The pith of conversation does not consist in
exhibiting your own superior knowledge on
matters of small importance, but in enlarging,
improving, and correcting the information you
possess, by the authority of others.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
The progress of a private conversation be-
tween two persons of different sexes is often
decisive of their fate, and gives it a turn very
distinct perhaps from what they themselves an-
ticipated. Gallantry becomes mingled with
conversation, and affection and passion come
gradually to mix with gallantry. Nobles, as
well as shepherd swains, will, in such a trying
moment, say more than they intended, and
queens, like village maidens, will listen longer
than they should. SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Till subdued by age and illness, his [Sir James
Mackintosh's] conversation was more brilliant
and instructive than that of any human being I
ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with.
His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he
so managed as co make it a source of pleasure
and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine
of colloquial oppression into which it is some-
times erected. He remembered things, words,
thoughts, dates, and everything that was wanted.
His language was beautiful, and might have
gone from the fireside to the press.
REV. SYDNEY SMITH:
Mackintosh's Life, and Smith's Works.
There are three things in speech that ought
to be considered before some things are spoken,
the manner, \hz place, and the time.
SOUTHEY.
I shall begin with him we usually call a Gen-
tleman, or man of conversation.
It is generally thought, that warmth of imagi-
nation, quick relish of pleasure, and a manner
of becoming it, are the most essential qualities
for forming this sort of man. But any one that
is much in company will observe, that the height
of good breeding is shown rather in never giv-
ing offence, than in doing obliging things ; thus
he that never shocks you, though he is seldom
entertaining, is more likely to keep your favour,
than he who often entertains, and sometimes
displeases you. The most necessary talent there-
fore iu a man of conversation, which is what we
ordinarily intend by a fine Gentleman, is a good
judgment. He that hath this in perfection is
master of his companion, without letting him see
it ; and has the same advantage over men of any
other qualifications whatsoever, as one that can
see would have over a blind man of ten times
his strength.
SIR R. STEELE : Toiler, No. 21.
His judgment is so gopd and unerring, and
accompanied with so cheerful a spirit, that his
conversation is a continual feast, it which he
helps some, and is helped by othe.s, in such a
manner that the equality of society is perfectly
kept up, and every man obliges as much as he
is obliged ; for it is the greatest and justest skill,
in a man of superior understanding, to know
how to be on a level with his companions.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 21.
Among others in that company we had Flo-
rio, who never interrupted any man living when
he was speaking ; or ever ceased to speak but
others lamented that he had done. His dis-
course ever arises from a fulness of the matter be-
fore him, and not from ostentation or triumph of
his understanding; for though he seldom deliv-
ers what he need fear being repeated, he speaks
without having that end in view ; and his for-
bearance of calumny or bitterness is owing rather
to his good nature than his discretion ; for which
reason he is esteemed a gentleman perfectly
qualified for conversation, in whom a general
good will to mankind takes off the necessity of
caution and circumspection.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatkr, No. 45.
It is a melancholy thing to consider, that the
most engaging sort of men in conversation are
frequently the most tyrannical in power, and the
least to be depended upon in friendship. It is
certain this is not to be imputed to their own
disposition ; but he, that is to be led by others,
has only good luck if he is not the worst, though
in himself the best, man living.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler,No. 176.
An easy manner of conversation is the most
desirable quality a man can have ; and for that
reason coxcombs will take upon them to be fa-
miliar with people whom they never saw before.
What adds to the vexation of it is, that they will
act upon the foot of knowing you by fame ; and
rally with you, as they call it, by repeating what
your enemies say of you ; and court you, as
they think, by uttering to your face, at a wrong
time, all the kind things your friends speak of
you in your absence.
These people are the more dreadful, the more
they have of what is usually called wit : for a
lively imagination, when it is not governed by a
good understanding, makes such miserable havoc
both in. conversation and business, that it lays
you defenceless, and fearful to throw the least
word in its way that may give it new matter for
its farther errors.
Tom Mercet has as quick a fancy as any one
living; but there is no reasonable man can bear
him half an hour. His purpose is to entertain,
and it is of no consequence to him what is said,
so it be what is called well said : as if a man
mus< bear a wound with patience, becviuse he
that pushed at you came up with a good nir and
mien. SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No 219.
The hours which we spend in conversation
are the most pleasing of any which we enjoy : yet
methinks there is very little care taken to improve
ourselves for the frequent repetition of them.
CONVERSA T1ON.
'39
The common fault in this case is that of grow-
ing too intimate, and falling into displeasing
familiarities; for it is a very ordinary thing for
men to make no other use of a close acquaint-
ance with each other's affairs, but to tease one
another with unacceptable allusions. One would
pass over patiently such as converse like ani-
mals, and salute each other with bangs on the
shoulder, sly raps with canes, or other robust
pleasantries practised by the rural gentry of this
nation : but even among those who should have
more polite ideas of things, you see a set of peo-
ple who invert the design of conversation, and
make frequent mention of ungrateful subjects ;
nay, mention them because they are ungrateful ;
as if the perfection of society were in knowing
how to offend on the one part, and how to bear
an offence on the other.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 225.
Equality is the life of conversation ; and he
is as much out who assumes to himself any part
above another, as he who considers himself
below the rest of the society. Familiarity in
inferiors is sauciness; in superiors, condescen-
sion ; neither of which are to have being among
companions, the very word implying that they
are to be equal. When, therefore, we have
abstracted the company from all considerations
of their quality or fortune, it will immediately
appear, that to make it happy and polite, there
must nothing be started which shall discover
that our thoughts run upon any such distinctions.
Hence it will arise, that benevolence must be-
come the rule of society, and he that is most
obliging must be most diverting.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 225.
In conversation, the medium is neither to
affect silence or eloquence ; not to value our
approbation, and to endeavour to excel us who
are of your company, are equal injuries. The
great enemies therefore to good company, and
those who transgress most against the laws of
equality, which is the life of it, are the clown,
the wit, and the pedant.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 244.
It is a secret known but to few, yet of no
small use in the conduct of life, that when you
fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you
should consider is, whether he has a greater in-
clination to hear you, or that you should hear
him. The latter is the more general desire, and
I know very able flatterers that never speak a
word in praise of the persons from whom they
obtain daily favours, but still practise a skilful
attention to whatever is uttered by those with
whom they converse.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 49.
That part of life which we ordinarily under-
stand by the word conversation, is an indulgence
to the sociable part of our make; and should
incline us to bring our proportion of good-will
.or good humour among the friends we meet
with, and not to trouble them with relations
which must of necessity oblige them to a real
or feigned affliction. Cares, distresses, diseases,
uneasinesses, and dislikes of our own, are by no
means to be obtruded upon our friends. If we
would consider how little of this vicissitude of
motion and rest, which we gall life, is spent
with satisfaction, we should be more tender of
our friends, than to bring them little sorrows
which do not belong to them. There is no real
life but cheerful life; therefore valetudinarians
should be sworn, before they enter into com-
pany, not to say a word of themselves until the
meeting breaks up.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 143.
Inquisitive people are the funnels of conver-
sation; they do not take in anything for their
own use, but merely to pass it to another.
SIR R. STEELE.
One of the best rules in conversation is, nevei
to say a thing which any of the company can
reasonably wish we had rather left unsaid : nor
can there anything be well moie contrary to the
ends for which people meet together, than to
part unsatisfied with each other or themselves.
SWIFT.
Old threadbare phrases will often make you
go out of your way to find and apply then), and
are nauseous to rational hearers. SWIFT.
One can revive a languishing conversation by
a sudden surprising sentence; another is more
dexterous in seconding; a third can fill the gap
with laughing. SWIFT.
There is no point wherein I have so much
laboured as that of improving and polishing all
parts of conversation between persons of quality.
SWIFT.
The only invention of late years which hath
contributed towards politeness in discourse is
that of abbreviating, or reducing words of many
syllables into one by lopping off the rest.
SWIFT.
Since the ladies have been left out of all
meetings except parties of play, our conversation
hath degenerated. 'SwiFT.
Entertain no long discourse with any but, if
you can, bring in something to season it with
religion. JEREMY TAYLOR.
The great endearments of prudent and tem-
perate speech. JEREMY TAYLOR.
The first ingredient in conversation is truth,
the next good sense, the third good humour,
and the fourth wit. SIR W. TEMPLE.
In conversation, humour is more than wit,
easiness more than knowledge.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
Amongst too many other instances of the
great corruption and degeneracy of the age
wherein we live, the great and general want of
sincerity in conversation is none of the least.
The world is grown so full of dissimulation and
compliment, that men's words are h \rdly any
signification of their thoughts; and if any man
140
CONVERSA T1ON. CONVERSION.
measure his words by his heart, and speaks as
lie thinks, and do not express more kindness to
every man than men usually have for any man,
he can hardly escape the censure of want of
breeding. TILLOTSON :
Sermon on Sincerity, July 29, 1694.
The dialect of conversation is nowadays so
swelled with vanity and compliment, and so sur-
feited (as I may say) of expressions of kindness
and respect, that if a man that lived an age or
two ago should return into the world again, he
would really want a dictionary to help him to
understand his own language, and to know the
true intrinsic value of the phrase in fashion ;
and would hardly at first believe at what a low
rate the highest strains and expressions of kind-
ness imaginable do commonly pass in current
payment; and when he should come to under-
stand it, it would be a great while before he
could bring himself with a good countenance,
and a good conscience, to converse with men
upon equal terms and in their own way.
TILLOTSON.
When a warm and imprudent talker adorns
some common character with excessive praises,
and carries it up to the stars, the moderate man
puts in a cautious word, and thinks it is suf-
ficient to raise it half so high. Or when he
hears a vast and unreasonable load of accusation
and infamy thrown upon some lesser mistakes
in life, the moderate man puts in a soft word of
excuse, lightens the burden of reproach, and
relieves the good name of the sufferer from
being pressed to death.
DR. I. WATTS : Christian Morality.
What we obtain by conversation is oftentimes
lost again as soon as the company breaks up, or,
at least, when the day vanishes.
DR. I. WATTS.
What we obtain by conversation soon vanishes
unless we note down what remarkables we have
found. DR. I. WATTS.
Let useful observations be at least some part
of the subject of your conversation.
DR. I. WATTS.
Many a man thinks admirably well, who has
a poor utterance ; while others have a charming
manner of speech, but their thoughts are trifling.
DR. I. WATTS.
Conversation with foreigners enlarges our
minds, and sets them free from many prejudices
we are ready to imbibe concerning them.
DR. I. WATTS.
Among the many just and admirable remarks
in this essay on " Discourse," Bacon does not
notice the distinction which is an important
one between those who speak because they
wish to say something, and those who speak
because they have something to say: that is,
between those who are aiming at displaying
their own knowledge or ability, and those who
speak from fulness of matter, and are thinking
only of the matter, and not of themselves and
the opinion that will be formed of them. This
latter, Bishop Butler calls (in reference to writ-
ings) " a man writing with simplicity and in
earnest." It is curious to observe how much
more agreeable is even inferior conversation of
this latter description, and how it is preferred by
many they know not why who are not accus-
tomed to analyze their own feelings, or to inquire
why they like or dislike.
Something nearly coinciding with the above
distinction, is that which some draw between
an "unconscious" and a " conscious" manner;
only that the latter extends to persons who are
not courting applause, but anxiously guarding
against censure. By a " conscious" manner is
meant, in short, a continual thought about one-
self, and about what the company will think of
us. The continual effort and watchful care on
the part of the speaker, either to obtain appro-
bation, or at least to avoid disapprobation,
always communicates itself in a certain degree
to the hearers.
Some draw a distinction, again, akin to the
above, between the desire to please, and the
desire to give pleasure ; meaning by the former
an anxiety to obtain for yourself the good opin-
ion of those you converse with, and by the other,
the wish to gratify them.
Aristotle, again, draws the distinction between
the Eiron and the Bomolochus, that the former
seems to throw out his wit for his own amuse-
ment, and the other for that of the company.
It is this latter, however, that is really the " con-
scious" speaker; because he is evidently seeking
to obtain credit as a wit by his diversion of the
company. The word seems nearly to answer to
what we call a " wag." The other is letting out
his good things merely from his own fulness.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay. Of Discourse.
CONVERSION.
No sooner was a convert initiated, but by ai
easy figure he became a new man, and both
acted and looked upon himself as one regen-
erated, and born a second time into anothei
state of existence. ADDISON.
It is pleasant to see a notorious profligate
seized with a concern for religion, and convert-
ing his spleen into zeal. ADDISON.
In what way, or by what manner of working,
God changes a soul from evil to good, how He
impregnates the barren rock the priceless gems
and gold is to the human mind an impenetra-
ble mystery in all cases alike.
COLERIDGE.
As to the value of conversions, God alone
can judge. God alone can know how wide are
the steps which the soul has to take before it
can approach to a community with Him, to the
dwelling of the perfect, or to the intercourse
and friendship of higher natures.
GOETHE.
CONVERSION. COPYRIGHT.
141
What is it but a continued perpetual voice
from heaven, to give men no rest in their sins,
no quiet from Christ's importunity, till they
awake from the lethargic sleep, and arise from
so dead, so mortiferous a state, and permit him
to give them life? HAMMOND.
These by obtruding the beginning of a change
for the entire work of new life will fall under
the former guilt. HAMMOND.
Till some admirable or unusual accident hap-
pens, as it hath in some, to work the beginning
of a better alteration in the mind, disputation
about the knowledge of God commonly pre-
vaileth little. HOOKER.
'Tis not for a desultory thought to atone for a
lewd course of life; nor for anything but the
superinducing of a virtuous habit upon a vicious
one, to qualify an effectual conversion.
L' ESTRANGE.
COPYRIGHT.
When a man by the exertion of his rational
powers has produced an original work, he seems
to have clearly a right to dispose of that iden-
tical work as he pleases, and any attempt to
vary the disposition he has made of it appears
to be an invasion of that right. Now, the iden-
tity of a literary composition consists entirely
in the sentiment and the language: the same
conceptions, clothed in the same words, must
necessarily be the same composition ; and what-
ever method be taken of exhibiting that com-
position to the ear or the eye of another, by
recital, by writing, or by printing, in any num-
ber of copies, or at any period of time, it is
always the identical work of the author which
is so exhibited ; and no other man (it hath been
thought) can have a right to exhibit it, especially
for profit, without the author's consent.
BLACKSTONE :
Comment., book ii. chap. 26.
Now, this is the sort of boon which my hon-
ourable and learned friend holds out to authors.
Considered as a boon to them it is a mere nul-
lity ; but considered as an impost on the public
it is no nullity, but a very serious and pernicious
reality. I will take an example. Dr. Johnson
died fifty-six years ago. If the law were what
my honourable and learned friend wishes to
make it, somebody would now have the mon-
opoly of Dr. Johnson's works. Who that some-
body would be it is impossible to say; but we
may venture to guess. I guess, then, that it
would have been some bookseller, who was the
assign of another bookseller, who was the grand-
son of a third bookseller, who had bought the
copyright from Black Frank, the doctor's ser-
vant and residuary legatee, in 1785 or 1786.
Now, would the knowledge that this copyright
would exist in 1841 have been a source of grati-
fication to Johnson ? W 7 ould it have stimulated
bis exertions? Would it have once drawn him
out of his bed before noon ? Would it have
once cheered him under a fit of the spleen?
Would it have induced him to give us one more
allegory, one more life of a poet, one more
imitation of Juvenal ? I firmly believe not. I
firmly believe that a hundred years ago, when
he was writing out debates for the Gentleman's
Magazine, he would very much rather have had
twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a
cook's shop underground. Considered as a
reward to him, the difference between a twenty
years' and sixty years' term of posthumous copy-
right would have been nothing, or next to
nothing. But is the difference nothing to us?
I can buy Rasselas for sixpence : I might have
had to give five shillings for it. I can buy the
Dictionary, the entire genuine Dictionary, for
two guineas, perhaps for less : I might have had
to give five or six guineas for it. Do I grudge
this to a man like Dr. Johnson ? Not at all.
Show me that the prospect of this boon roused
him to any vigorous effort, or sustained his
spirits under depressing circumstances, and I
am quite willing to pay the price of such an
object, heavy as that price is. But what I do
complain of is that my circumstances are to be
worse and Johnson's none the better; that I
am to give five pounds for what to him was not
worth a farthing. LORD MACAULAY:
Speech on Copyright, Feb. 5, 1841.
My honourable and learned friend dwells on
the claims of the posterity of great writers.
Undoubtedly, Sir, it would be very pleasing to
see a descendant of Shakspeare living in opu-
lence on the fruits of his great ancestor's genius.
A house maintained in splendour by such a
patrimony would be a more interesting and
striking object than Blenheim is to us, or than
Strath fieldsaye will be to our children. But,
unhappily, it is scarcely possible that, under any
system, such a thing can come to pass. My hon-
ourable and learned friend does not propose
that copyright shall descend to the eldest son,
or shall be bound up by irrevocable entail. It
is to be merely personal property. It is there
fore highly improbable that it will descend dur-
ing sixty years or half that term fronvparent to
child. The chance is that more people than
one will have an interest in it. They will in all
probability sell it and divide the proceeds. The
price which a bookseller will give for it will
bear no proportion to the sum which he will
afterwards draw from the public if his specula-
tion proves successful. He will give little, if
anything, more for a term of sixty years than
for a term of thirty or five-and-twenty. The
present value of a distant advantage is always
small ; but where there is great room to doubt
whether a distant advantage will be any advan-
tage at all, the present value sinks to almost
nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the public
taste that no sensible man will venture to pro-
nounce with confidence what the sale of any
book published in our days will be in the years
between 1890 and 1900. The whole fashion
of thinking and writing has often undergone a
change in a much shorter period than that to
which my honourable and learned friend would
142
COQUETTES. COUNTRY LIFE.
extend posthumous copyright. What would
have been considered the best literary property
in the earlier part of Charles the Second's reign ?
I imagine, Cowley's Poems. Overleap sixty
years, and you are in the generation of which
Pope asked, " Who now reads Cowley?" What
works were ever expected with more impatience
by the public than those of Lord Bolingbroke,
which appeared, I think, in 1754? In 1814110
bookseller would have thanked you for the
copyright of them all, if you had offered it to
him for nothing. What would Paternoster Row
give now for the copyright of Hayley's Triumphs
of Temper, so much admired within the memory
of people still living? I say, therefore, that
from the very nature of literary property it will
almost always pass away from an author's
family ; and I say that the price given for it
will bear a very small proportion to the tax
which the purchaser, if his speculation turns
out well, will in the course of a long series of
years levy on the public.
LORD MACAULAY:
Speech on Copyright, Feb. 5, 1841.
The principle of copyright is this: It is a tax
on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty
to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one ;
it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most
salutary of human pleasures ; and never let us
forget that a tax on innocent pleasures is a
premium on vicious pleasures. I admit, how-
ever, the necessity of giving a bounty to genius
and learning. In order to give such a bounty
I willingly submit even to this severe and bur-
densome tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the
tax if it can be shown that by so doing I should
proportionally increase the bounty.
LORD MACAULAY:
Speech on Copyright, Feb. 5, 1841.
COQUETTES.
First of all, I would have them seriously
think on the shortness of their time. Life is
not long enough for a coquette to play all her
tricks in. A timorous woman drops into her
grave before she is done deliberating. Were
the age of man the same that it was before the
flood, a lady might sacrifice half a century to a
scruple, and be two or three ages in demurring.
Had she nine hundred years good, she might
hold out to the conversion of the Jews before
she thought fit to be prevailed upon. But, alas !
she ought to play her part in haste, when she
considers that she is suddenly to quit the stage,
and make room for others.
In the second place, I would desire my female
readeis to consider that as the term of life is
short, that of beauty is much shorter. The
finest skin wrinkles in a few years, and loses
the strength of its colouring so soon, that we
have scarce time to admire it. I might embel-
lish this subject with roses and rainbows, and
several other ingenious conceits, which I may
possibly reserve for another opportunity.
There is a third consideration which I would
likewise recommend to a Demurrer, and that is
the great danger of her falling in love when she
is about threescore, if she cannot satisfy her
doubts and scruples before that time.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 89.
A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded
out of the passion she has to please, nor out of
a good opinion of her own beauty : tirhe and
years she regards as things that only wrinide and
decay other women ; forgets that age is written
in the face, and that the same dress which be-
came her when she was young, now only makes
her look the older. Affectation cleaves to her
even in sickness and pain ; she dies in a high-
head and coloured ribbons. LA BRUYERE.
CORPULENCE.
Fortunately, we are able to reassure our fat
friends ; no operation is involved in the modem
system of treating their superfluities. Dr. Dan-
eel's grand principle is this : to diminish em-
bonpoint without affecting the health, the patient
must live principally on meat (eating but a small
quantity of other aliment) and drinking but lit-
tle, and that little not water. In a hundred
parts of human fat, there are seventy-nine of car-
bon, fifteen and a fraction of hydrogen, and five
and a fraction of oxygen. But water is nothing
but the protoxide of hydrogen ; and hydrogen
is one of the main elements of fat. Therefore,
the aspirant after leanness must eat but few
vegetables, or watery messes, or hot rolls, pud-
dings, tarts, potatoes, haricots, pease-soup, char-
lottes, sweet biscuits, apple-rolls, nor cakes in
any of their protean forms ; because all these
dainties have carbon and oxygen for their prin-
cipal bases. If he will persist in living on le-
guminous, farinaceous, and liquid diet, he will
make fat as certainly as the bee makes honey
by sucking flowers. Household Words.
COUNSEL.
A man may think, if he will, that two eyes
see no more than one ; or that a gamester seeth
always more than a looker-on ; . . . but when
all is done, the help of good counsel is that
which setteth business strait.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXVII L, Of Friendship.
Though I may not be able to inform men
more than they know, yet I may give them the
occasion to consider. SIR W. TEMPLE.
COUNTRY LIFE.
Groves, fields, and meadows are at any sea-
son of the year pleasant to look upon, but never
so much as in the opening of the spring, when
they are all new and fresh, with their first glow
COUNTRY LIFE. COURAGE.
'43
upon them, and not yet too much accustomed
and familiar to the eye. For this reason there
is nothing that more enlivens a prospect than
rivers, jetteaus, or falls of water, where the
scene is perpetually shifting, and entertaining
the sight every moment with something that is
new. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 412.
Rural recreations abroad, and books at home,
are the innocent pleasures of a man who is early
wise ; and give fortune no more hold of him
than of necessity he must. DRYDEN.
Tasso, in his similitudes, never departed from
the woods; that is, his representations were
taken from the country. DRYDEN.
Take the case of a common English landscape ;
green meadows with fat cattle ; canals, or navi-
gable rivers; well-fenced, well-cultivated fields;
neat, clean, scattered cottages; humble antique
church, with church-yard elms; and crossing
hedge-rows, all seen under bright skies, and in
good weather : there is much beauty, as every
one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in
what does the beauty consist ? -Not, certainly,
in the mere mixture of colours and forms ; for
colours more pleasing, and lines more graceful
(according to any theory of grace that may be
preferred), might be spread upon a board, or a
painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a
second glance, or raising- the least emotion in
the mind; but in the picture of human happi-
ness that is presented to our imaginations and
affections, and in the visible and unequivocal
signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoy-
ment and of that secure and successful indus-
try that insures its continuance and of the
piety by which it is exalted and of the sim-
plicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt
and the fever of a city life, in the images of
health and temperance and plenty which it ex-
hibits to every eye, and in the glimpses which it
affords to warmer imaginations of those primi-
tive or fabulous times when man was uncor-
rupted by luxury and ambition ; and of those
humble retreats in which we still delight to
imagine that love and philosophy may find an
unpolluted asylum. LORD JEFFREY.
Cato Major, who had with great reputation
borne all the great offices of the commonwealth,
has left us an evidence, under his own hand,
how much he was versed in country affairs.
LOCKE.
In those vernal seasons of the year when the
air is soft and pleasant, it were an injury and
sullenness against nature not to go out and see
her riches, and partake of her rejoicings with
heaven and earth. MILTON.
Very few people [husband and wife]
ttied entirely in the country but haN
_, that have
settled entirely in the country but have grown
at length weary of one another. The "lady's
conversation generally falls into a thousand im-
pertinent effects of idleness ; and the gentleman
falls in love with his dogs and his horses, and
wt of love with everything else. . . . 'Tis my
opinion, 'tis necessary to be happy that we
neither of us think any place more agreeable
than that where we are.
LADY M. W. MONTAGUE:
To E. IV. Montague (before marriage}.
There is no character more deservedly es-
teemed than that of a country gentleman who
understands the station in which Heaven and
Nature have placed him. He is father to his
tenants, and patron to his neighbours, and is more
superior to those of lower fortune by his benev-
olence than his possessions. He justly divides
his time between solitude and company so as to
use one for the other. His life is spent in the
good offices of an advocate, a referee, a com-
panion, a mediator, and a friend. His counsel
and knowledge are a guard to the simplicity and
innocence of those of lower talents, and the
entertainment and happiness of those of equal.
When a man in a country life has this turn, as
it is hoped thousands have, he lives in a more
happy condition than any that is described in
the pastoral description of poets, or the vain-,
glorious solitudes recorded by philosophers.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatter, No. 169.
I must detain you a little longer, to tell you
that I never enter this delicious retirement but
my spirits are revived, and a sweet complacency
diffuses itself over my whole mind. And how
can it be otherwise, with a conscience void of
offence, where the music of falling waters, the
symphony of birds, the gentle humming of bees,
the breath of flowers, the fine imagery of paint-
ing and sculpture, in a word, the beauties and
the charms of nature and of art, court all my
faculties, refresh the fibres of the brain, and
smooth every avenue of thought ? What pleas-
ing meditations, what agreeable wanderings of
the mind, and what delicious slumbers, have I
enjoyed here ! And when I turn up some mas-
terly writer to my imagination, methinks here
his beauties appear in the most advantageous
light, and the rays of his genius shoot upon me
with greater force and brightness than ordinary.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 179.
COURAGE.
Courage that grows from constitution very
often forsakes a man when he has occasion for
it; and when it is only a kind of instinct in the
soul, it breaks out on all occasions, without
judgment or discretion That courage which
arises from the sense of our duty, and from the
fear of offending Him that made us, acts always
in an uniform manner, and according to the dic-
tates of right reason.
ADDISON: Guardian.
Dangers are light, if they once seem light ; and
more dangers have deceived men than forced
them. LORD BACON.
An intrepid courage is at best but a holiday
kind of virtue, to be seldom exercised, and never
144
COURAGE. COURTSHIP.
but in cases of necessity : affability, mildness,
tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring
back tb its original signification of virtue, I
mean good nature, are of daily use; they are
the bread of mankind and staff of life.
DRYDEN.
Courage may be virtue, where the daring act
is extreme; and extreme fear no vice, when the
danger is extreme. HOBBES.
As to moral courage, I have very rarely met
v ith the two o'clock in the morning courage. I
mean, unprepared courage, that. which is neces-
sary on an unexpected occasion, and which, in
spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full
freedom of judgment and decision.
NAPOLEON I. : Las Cases, vol. i. part ii.
As knowledge without justice ought to be
called cunning rather than wisdom ; so a mind
prepared to meet danger, if excited by its own
eagerness and not the public good, deserves the
name of audacity rather than of courage.
PLATO.
True courage has so little to do with anger,
that there lies always the strongest suspicion
against it, where this passion is highest. True
courage is cool and calm. The bravest of men
have the least of a brutal bullying insolence, and
in the very time of danger are found the most
serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can
make a coward forget himself and fight. But
what is done in fury or anger can never be
placed to the account of courage.
SHAFTESBURY.
A great deal of talent is lost in the world for
the want of a little courage. Every day sends
to their graves a number of obscure men who
have only remained in obscurity because their
timidity has prevented them from making a first
effort ; and who, if they could have been in-
duced to begin, would in all probability have
gone great lengths in the career of fame. The
fact is, that to do anything in this world worth
doing, we must not stand back shivering and
thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in
and scramble through as well as we can. It will
not do to be perpetually calculating risks and
adjusting nice chances ; it did very well before
the Flood, when a man could consult his friends
upon an intended publication for a hundred
and fifty years, and then live to see his success
afterwards; but at present a man waits, and
doubts, and consults his brother and his particu-
lar friends, till one fine day he finds that he is
sixty years of age ; that he has lost so much
time in consulting his first-cousins and particular
friends, that he has no more time to follow their
advice. REV. SYDNEY SMITH.
Some are brave one day, and cowards an-
other, as great captains have often told me, from
their own experience and observation.
SIR W. TEMPLE.
Cruelty . . . argues not only a depravedness
of nature, but also a meanness of courage and
imbecility of mind. SIR W. TEMPLE.
COURTSHIP.
The pleasantest part of a man's life is gen-
erally that which passes in courtship, provided
his passion be sincere, and the party beloved
kind with discretion.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 261.
Every man in the time of courtship, and in
the first entrance of marriage, puts on a beha-
viour like my correspondent's holiday s'lit.
ADDISON.
Tom hinting at his dislike of some trifle his
mistress had said, she asked him how he would
talk to her after marriage if he talked at this
rate before ? ADDISON.
To return to my own case. It is very hard,
I think, that no provision is made for bashful
men like me, who want to declare the state of
their affections, who are not accustomed to
female society, and who are habitually startled
and confused, even on ordinary occasions, when-
ever they hear the sound of their own voices.
There are people ready to assist us in every other
emergency of our lives ; but in the greatest
difficulty of all, we are inhumanly left to help
ourselves. There have been one or two rare
occasions, on which one or two unparalleled
women have nobly stepped forward and relieved
us of our humiliating position as speechless
suitors, by taking all the embarrassment of
makin? the offer on their own shoulders.
Household Words.
For the whole endeavour of both parties,
during the time of courtship, is to hinder them-
selves from being known, and to disguise their
natural temper, and real desires, in hypocritical
imitation, studied compliance, and continued
affectation. From the time that their love is
avowed, neither sees the other but in a mask,
and the cheat is managed often on both sides
with so much art, and discovered afterward with
so much abruptness, that each has reason to
suspect that some transformation has happened
on the wedding-night, and that, by a strange
imposture, one has been courted and another
married.
I desire you, therefore, Mr. Rambler, to
question all who shall hereafter come to you
with matrimonial complaints, concerning their
behaviour in the time of courtship, and inform
them that they are neither to wonder nor repine,
when a contract begun with fraud has ended in
disappointment.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 45.
When a woman is deliberating with herself
whom she shall choose of many near each other
in other pretensions, certainly he of best under-
standing is to be preferred. Life hangs heavily
in the repeated conversation of one who has no
imagination to be fired at the several occasions
and objects which come before him, or who
cannot strike out of his reflections new paths of
pleasing discourse.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 522.
COURTSHIP. COVETOUSNESS.CREA TION.
The advantages, as I was going to say, of
sense, beauty, and riches, are what are certainly
the chief motives to a prudent young woman of
fortune for changing her condition ; but as she is
to have her eye upon each of these, she is to ask
herself whether the man who has most of these
recommendations in the lump is not the most
desirable. He that has excellent talents, with
a moderate estate, and an agreeable person, is
preferable to him who is only rich, if it were
only that good faculties may purchase riches; but
riches cannot purchase worthy endowments. I
do not mean that wit, and a capacity to enter-
tain, is what should be highly valued, except it
is founded on good nature and humanity. There
are many ingenious men whose abilities do little
else but make themselves and those about them
uneasy.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 522.
Courtship consists in a number of quiet atten-
tions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague
; not to be understood. STERNE.
COVETOUSNESS.
Some men are so covetous as if they were to
live forever; and others so profuse, as if they
were to die the next moment.
ARISTOTLE.
There is not in nature anything so remotely
distant from .God, or so extremely opposite to
him, as a greedy and griping niggard.
BARROW.
The covetous man is a downright servant, a
man condemned to work in mines, which is the
lowest and hardest condition of servitude ; and,
to increase his misery, a worker there for he
knows not whom : " He heapeth up riches, and
knows not who shall enjoy them :" it is only sure
that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy them.
He is an indigent, needy slave; he will hardly
allow himself clothes and board-wages; he de-
frauds not only other men, but his own genius;
he cheats himself for money. But the servile
and miserable condition of this wretch is so
apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every
man's sight as well as judgment.
COWLEY.
Let not the covetous design of growing rich
induce you to ruin your reputation, but rather
satisfy yourself with a moderate fortune; and let
your thoughts be wholly taken up with acquiring
to yourself a glorious name. DRYDEN.
I have just occasion to complain of them who,
because they understand not Chaucer, would
hoard him up as misers do their grandam gold,
only to look on it themselves, and hinder others
from making use of it. DRYDEN.
Rich people who are covetous are like the
cypress-tree : they may appear well, but are
fruitless; so rich persons have the means to be
generous, yet some are not so : but they should
IO
consider that they are only trustees for what they
possess, and should show their wealth to be
more in doing good than merely in having it.
They should not reserve their benevolence for
purposes after they are dead : for those who give
not till they die, show that they would not then,
if they could keep it any longer.
BISHOP J. HALL.
The desire of more and more rises by a nat-
ural gradation to most, and after that to all.
L' ESTRANGE.
The character of covetousness is what a man
generally acquires more through some niggard-
liness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable
things than in expenses of any consequence. A
very few pounds a year would ease that man of
the scandal of avarice. POPE :
Thoughts on Various Subjects.
Our language, by a peculiar significance of
dialect, calls the covetous man the miserable
man. SOUTH.
The covetous man heaps up riches, not to
enjoy them, but to have them; and starves him-
self in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally
cheats and robs himself of that which is his
own ; and makes a hard shift to be as poor and
miserable with a great estate as any man can be
without it. TlLLOTSON.
The man who enslaves himself to his money
is prcclaimed in our very language to be a miser,
or a miserable man. R. C. TRENCH.
CREATION.
These duplicates in those parts of the body,
without which a man might have very well sub-
sisted, though not so well as with them, are a
plain demonstration of an all-wise Contriver,
as those more numerous copyings which are
found among the vessels of the same body are
evident demonstrations that they could not be
the work of chance. This argument receives
additional strength if we apply it to every ani-
mal and insect within our knowledge, as well
as to those numberless living creatures that are
objects too minute for a human eye : and if we
consider how the several species in this whole
world of life resemble one another in very
many particulars, so far as is convenient for
their respective states of existence, it is much
more probable that a hundred millions of dice
should be casually thrown a hundred millions
of times in the same number than that the body
of any single animal should be produced by the
fortuitous concourse of matter. And that the
like chance should arise in innumerable in-
stances requires a degree of credulity that is not
under the direction of common sense. We
may carry this consideration yet farther if we
reflect on the two sexes in every living species,
with their resemblances to each other, and those
particular distinctions that were necessary for
the keeping up of this great world of life.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 543.
146
CREATION.
If there were beings who lived in the depths
of the earth, in dwellings adorned with statues
and paintings, and everything which is possessed
in rich abundance by those whom men esteem
fortunate ; and if these beings could receive
tidings of the might and majesty of the gods,
and could then emerge from their hidden dwell-
ings through the open fissures of the earth to
the places which we inhabit; if they could sud-
denly behold the earth and the sea and the
vault of heaven ; could recognize the expanse
of the cloudy firmament, and the might of the
winds of heaven, and admire the sun in his
majesty, beauty, and radiant effulgence ; and
lastly, when night veiled the earth in darkness,
they could behold the starry heavens, the chang-
ing moon, and the stars rising and setting in the
unvarying course ordained from eternity, they
would surely exclaim, " There are gods ! and
such great things must be the work of their
hands." ARISTOTLE :
Quoted by Humboldt in his Cosmos.
A spontaneous production is against matter
of fact; a thing without example not only in
man, but the vilest of weeds. BENTLEY.
An eternal sterility must have possessed the
world where all things had been fixed and fast-
ened everlastingly with the adamantine chains
of specific gravity, if the Almighty had not
spoken and said, " Let the earth bring forth
grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
yielding fruit, after its kind :" and it was so.
BENTLEY.
The order and beauty of the inanimate parts
of the world, the discernible ends of them, the
meliority above what was necessary to be, do
evince by a reflex argument, that it is the work-
manship, not of blind mechanism, or blinder
chance, but of an intelligent and benign agent.
BENTLEY.
That all these distances, motions, and quan-
tities of matter should be so accurately and
harmoniously adjusted in this great variety of
our system, is above the fortuitous hits of blind
material causes, and must certainly flow from
that eternal fountain of wisdom.
BENTLEY.
Let there be an admiration of those divine
attributes and prerogatives for whose manifesting
he was pleased to construct this vast fabric.
BOYLE.
God may rationally be supposed to have
framed so great and admirable an automaton as
the world, for several ends and purposes.
BOYLE.
We are raised by science to an understanding
of the infinite wisdom and goodness which the
Creator has displayed in all His works. Not a
step can we take in any direction without per-
ceiving the most extraordinary traces of design;
and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calcu-
lated in so vast a proportion of instances to pro-
mote the happiness of living creatures, and es-
pecially of ourselves, that we fuel no hesitation
in concluding that if we knew the whole scheme
of Providence, every part would appear to be in
harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.
Independently, however, of this most consoling
inference, the delight is inexpressible of being
able to follow the marvellous works of the Great
Author of nature, and to trace the unbounded
power and exquisite skill which are exhibited by
the most minute as well as the mightiest parts
of His system. LORD BROUGHAM.
Nothing can act before it will be. The first
man was not, and therefore could not make hiia-
self to be. For anything to produce itself is to
act ; if it acted before it was, it was then some-
thing and nothing at the same time; it then had
a being before it had a being; it acted when it
brought itself into being. How could it act
without a being, without it was? So that if it
were the cause of itself, it must be before itself
as well as after itself; it was before it was; it
was as a cause before it was as an effect.
CHARNOCK : Attributes.
Let us carry ourselves back in spirit to the
mysterious week, to the teeming work-days of
the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye
of the inspired historian of the generations of the
heavens and the earth, in the days that the Lord
God made the earth and the heavens. And who
that hath watched their ways with an under-
standing heart could contemplate the filial and
loyal bee, the home-building, wedded, and di-
vorceless sparrow, and, above all, the manifoldly
intelligent ant-tribes, with their commonwealths
and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the
husband-folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the
honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters with the holy
instincts of maternal love, detached, and in self-
less purity, and not say to himself, Behold the
shadow of approaching humanity, the sun aris-
ing from behind, in the kindling morning of the
creation! S. T. COLERIDGE :
Aids to Reflection, App. xxxvi.
That divers limners at a distance, without
either copy or design, should draw the same
picture to an undistinguishable exactness, is
more conceivable than that matter, which is so
diversified, should frame itself so unerringly,
according to the idea of its kind.
GLANVILL.
Certain passive strictures, or signatures, of
that wisdom which hath made and ordered iL
things with the highest reason.
SIR M. HALE.
Why, it will be said, may we not suppose the
world has always continued as it is; that is,
that. there has been a constant succession of
finite beings appearing and disappearing on the
earth from all eternity? I answer. Whatever
is supposed to have occasioned this constant suc-
cession, exclusive of an intelligent cause, will
never account for the undeniable marks of de-
sign visible in all finite beings. Nor is the
absurdity of supposing a contrivance without &
CREATION.
147
contriver diminished by this imaginary succes-
sion ; but rather increased, by being repeated at
every step of the series.
Besides, an eternal succession of finite beings
involves in it a contradiction, and is therefore
plainly impossible. As the supposition is made
to get rid of the idea of any one having existed
from eternity, each of the beings in succession
must have begun in time: but the succession
itself is eternal. We have then the succession
of beings infinitely earlier than any being in the
succession ; or, in other words, a series of beings
running on ad infinitum before it reached any
particular being, which is absurd. From these
considerations it is manifest there must be some
eternal Being, or nothing could ever have ex-
isted ; and since the beings which we behold
bear in their whole structure evident marks of
wisdom and design, it is equally certain that he
who formed them is a wise and intelligent agent.
ROBERT HALL:
Modern Infidelity, Preface.
Whoever considers the study of anatomy I
believe will never be an atheist; the frame of
man's body and coherence of his parts being so
strange and paradoxical that I hold it to be the
greatest miracle of nature.
LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY.
The wisdom and goodness of the Maker
plainly appears in the parts of this stupendous
fabric, and the several degrees and ranks of
creatures in it. LOCKE.
There is not so contemptible a plant or animal
that does not confound the most enlarged under-
standing. LOCKE.
It is suitable to the magnificent harmony of
the universe that the species of creatures should,
by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward
descend
)CKE.
Is it possible that a promiscuous jumble of
printing letter should often fall into a method
which should stamp on paper a coherent dis-
course ? LOCKE.
We cannot look around us without being
struck by the surprising variety and multiplicity
of the sources of Beauty of Creation, produced
by form, or by colour, or by both united. It is
scarcely too much to say, that every object in
nature, animate or inanimate, is in some manner
beautiful : so largely has the Creator provided
for our pleasures through the sense of sight. It
i> rare to see anything which is in itself distaste-
ful, or disagreeable to the eye, or repulsive :
while on this, however, they are alone entitled
to pronounce who have cultivated the faculty in
question ; since, like every other quality of mind
as of body, it is left to ourselves to improve that
of which the basis has been given to us, as the
means of cultivating it have been placed in our
power.
May I not also say, that this beauty has been
conferred in wisdom, as in beneficence ? It is
his perfection, as we see they gradually d<
from us downward. Loc
one of the revelations which the Creator has
made of Himself to man. He was to be ad-
mired and loved : it was through the demonstra-
tions of His character that we could alone see
Him and judge of Him : and in thus inducing
or compelling us to admire and love the visible
works of His hand, He has taught us to love
and adore Himself. This is the gre.at lesson
which the beauty of Creation teaches, in addition
to the pleasure which it affords ; but, for this, we
must cultivate that simple and surely amiable
piety which learns to view the Father of the
Universe in all the works of that universe.
Such is the lesson taught by that certainly rea-
sonable philosophy which desires to unite what
men have too much laboured to dissever; a state
of mind which is easily attainable, demands no
effort of feeling beyond that of a simple and
good heart, and needs not diverge into a weak
and censurable enthusiasm. Much therefore is
he to be pitied or condemned who has not culti-
vated this faculty in this manner; who is not for-
ever looking round on creation in feeling and in
search of those beauties ; that he may thus bend
in gratitude and love before the Author of all
Beauty. DR. J. MACCULLOCH.
Could necessity infallibly produce quarries of
stone, which are the materials of all magnificent
structures ? SIR T. MORE.
It became him who created them to set them
in order : and if he did so, it is unphilosophical
to seek for any other origin of the world, or to
pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the
mere laws of nature. SIR I. NEWTON.
Let us then consider the works of God, and
observe the operations of his hands : let us take
notice of and admire his infinite wisdom and
goodness in the formation of them. No crea-
ture in this sublunary world is capable of so
doing beside man ; yet we are deficient herein :
we content ourselves v/ith the knowledge of the
tongues, and a little skill in philology, or his-
tory perhaps, and antiquity, and neglect : that
which to me seems more material. I mean
natural history and the works of the creation.
JOHN RAY :
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the
Works of the Creation.
There is no greater, at least no more palpable
and convincing, argument of the existence of a
Deity than the admirable art and wisdom that
discovers itself in the make and constitution, the
order and disposition, the ends and uses, of all
the parts and members of this stately fabric of
heaven and earth. For if in the works of art,
as for example a curious edifice or machine,
counsel, design, and direction to an end, appear-
ing in the whole frame, and in all ihe several
pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and
operation of some intelligent architect or en-
gineer, why shall not also in the works of na-
ture, that grandeur and magnificence, that
excellent contrivance for beauty, order, use, etc.,
which is observable in them, wherein they do at
1 48
CREA TION. CRIMES. CRITICISM.
much transcend the effects of human art as infi-
nite power and wisdom exceeds finite, infer the
existence and efficiency of an Omnipotent and
Ail-wise Creator ? RAY.
A wonder it must be that there should be any
man found so stupid as to persuade himself that
this most beautiful world could be produced by
the fortuitous concourse of atoms. RAY.
Should he find upon one single sheet of parch-
ment an oration written full of profound sense,
adorned with elegant phrase, the wit of man
could not persuade him that this was done by
the temerarious dashes of an unguided pen.
RAY.
It is more worthy of the Deity to attribute the
creation of the world to the exundation and
overflowing of his transcendent and infinite
goodness. RAY.
To run the world back to its first original, and
view nature in its cradle, to trace the outgoings
of the Ancient of days in the first instance of
his creative power, is a research too great for
mortal inquiry. SOUTH.
Aristotle held that it streamed by connatural
result and emanation from God ; so that there
was no instant assignable of God's eternal ex-
istence in which the world did not also co-exist.
SOUTH.
God, surveying the works of creation, leaves
us this general impress or character upon them,
that they were exceeding good. SOUTH.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous
concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than
that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet
would fall into a most ingenious treatise of phi-
losophy. SWIFT.
How often might a man after he had jumbled
a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the
ground before they would fall into an exact
poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse
in prose ! And may not a little book be as
easily made by chance as this great volume of
the world ? How long might a man be in sprin-
kling colours upon a canvas with a careless
hand before they could happen to make the ex-
act picture of a man ? And is a man easier
made by chance than his picture? How long
might twenty thousand blind men, which should
be sent out from the several remote parts of
England, wander up and down before they
would all meet in Salisbury Plains, and fall into
rank and file in the exact order of an army ?
And yet this is much more easy to be imagined
than how the innumerable blind parts of matter
should rendezvous themselves into a world.
TILLOTSON : Sermons.
Researches into the springs of natural bodies
and their motions should awaken us to admira-
tion at the wondrous wisdom of our Creator in
all the works of nature. DR. I. WATTS.
CRIMES.
Crimes lead into one another. They who ar
capable of being forgers are capable of being
incendiaries. BURKE:
To Sir A. I. Elton, Jan. 30, 1777.
Crimes are the actions of physical beings with
an evil intention abusing their physical powers
against justice and to the detriment of society.
BURKE :
Imp. of W. Hastings ; Report on the Lords-
Journal, 1794.
Thank God, my Lords, men that are greatly
guilty are never wise. I repeat it men that
are greatly guilty are never wise. In their de-
fence of one crime they are sure to meet the
ghost of some former defence, which, like the
spectre in Virgil, drives them back.
BURKE : Imp. of W. Hastings.
Great crimes are commonly produced either
out of a cold intensity of selfishness, or out of
a hot intensity of passion. It is not difficult for
any one to say which will lead to the more de-
testable results. The visible ferocity, the glare
of envy or wild hatred in the criminal who slays
his enemy foul and detestable as it must ever
be is not so loathsome as the tranquil good
humour of the wretch utterly lost in self-content,
ready without a particle of malice or compunc-
tion to pluck neighbours' lives, as fruit, for his
material refreshment. Household Words.
CRITICISM.
Of this shallow species there is not a more
unfortunate, empty, and conceited animal than
that which is generally known by the name of a
Critic. This, in the common acceptation of the
word, is one that, without entering into the sense
and soul of an author, has a few general rules,
which, like mechanical instruments, he applies
to the works of every writer ; and as they quad-
rate with them, pronounces the author perfect or
defective. He is master of a. certain set of
words, as Unity, Style, Fire, Phlegm, Easy, Nat-
ural, Turn, Sentiment, and the like ; which he
varies, compounds, divides, and throws together,
in every part of his discourse, without any
thought or meaning. The marks you may know
him by are, an elevated eye, and dogmatical
brow, a positive voice, and a contempt for
everything that comes out, whether he has read
it or not. ADDISON : Tatler, No. 165.
For this reason I think there is nothing in the
world so tiresome as the works of those critics
who write in a positive dogmatic way, without
either language, genius, or imagination. If the
reader would see how the best of the Latin
critics wrote, he may find their manner very
beautifully described in the characters of Horace,
Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus, as they are
drawn in the essay of which I am now speaking,
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 253.
CRITICISM.
149
Above all, I would have them well versed in
the Greek and Latin poets, without which a man
very often fancies that he understands a critic,
when in reality he does not comprehend his
meaning. It is in criticism as in all other sci-
ences and speculations; one who brings with
him any implicit notions and observations, which
he has made in his reading of the poets, will
find his own reflections methodized and ex-
plained, and perhaps several little hints that had
passed in his mind, perfected and improved in
the works of a good critic ; whereas one who
tas not these previous lights is very often an
utter stranger to what he reads, and apt to put a
wrong interpretation upon it.
Nor is it sufficient that a man, who sets up for
a judge in criticism, should have perused the
authors above-mentioned, unless he has also a
clear and logical head. Without this talent he
is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his
own blunders, mistakes the sense of those he
would confute, or, if he chances to think right,
does not know how to convey his thoughts to
another with clearness and perspicuity. Aristotle,
who was the best critic, was also one of the best
logicians that ever appeared in the world.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291.
I might farther observe that there is not a
Greek or Latin critic, who has not shown, even
in the style of his criticisms, that he was a mas-
ter of all the elegance and delicacy of his native
tongue.
The truth of it is, there is nothing more ab-
surd than for a man to set up for a critic, without a
good insight into ali the parts of learning; whereas
many of those, who have endeavoured to signal-
ize themselves by works of this nature, among
our English writers, are not only defective in the
above-mentioned particulars, but plainly dis-
cover, by the phrases which they make use of,
and by their confused way of thinking, that they
are not acquainted with the most common and
ordinary systems of arts and sciences. A few
general rules extracted out of the French au-
thors, with a certain cant of words, has some-
times set up an illiterate heavy writer for a most
judicious and formidable critic.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291.
One great mark by which you may discover a
critic who has neither taste nor learning, is this :
that he seldom ventures to praise any passage in
an author which has not been before received
and applauded by the public, and that his criti-
cism turns wholly upon little faults and errors.
This part of a critic is so very easy to succeed
in, that we find every ordinary reader, upon the
publishing of a new poem, has wit and ill nature
enough to turn several passages of it into ridi-
cule, and very often in the right place. This
Mr. Dryden has very agreeably remarked in these
two celebrated lines :
" Err >rs, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below."
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excel-
lences than imperfections, to discover the* con-
cealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to
the world such things as are worth their obser-
vation. The most exquisite words, and finest
strokes of an author, are those which very often
appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a
man who wants a relish for polite learning ; and
they are those which a sour undistinguishing
critic generally attacks with the greatest violence.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291.
Besides, a man who has the gift of ridicule is
apt to find fault with anything that gives him an
opportunity of exerting his beloved talent, and
very often censures a passage, not because there
is any fault in it, but because he can be merry
upon it. Such kinds of pleasantry are very un-
fair and disingenuous in works of criticism, in
which the greatest masters, both ancient and
modern, have always appeared with a serious
and instructive air.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291.
It is likewise necessary for a man who would
form to himself a finished taste of good writing
to be well versed in the works of the best critics,
both ancient and modern. I must confess that I
could wish there were authors of this .kind, who,
besides the mechanical rules, which a man of
very little taste may discourse upon, would enter
into the very spirit and soul of fine writing, and
show us the several sources of that pleasure
which rises in the mind upon the perusal of a
noble work.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 409.
I have a great esteem for a true critic, such as
Aristotle and Longinus among the Greeks ;
Horace and Quintilian among the Romans ;
Boileau and Dacier among the French. But it
is our misfortune that some who set up for pro-
fessed critics among us are so stupid that they do
not know how to put ten words together with
elegance or common propriety; and withal so
illiterate that they have no taste of the learned
languages, and therefore criticise upon old au-
thors only at second-hand. They judge of them
by what others have written, and not by any
notions they have of the authors themselves.
The words unity, action, sentiment, and diction,
pronounced with an air of authority, give them
a figure among unlearned readers, who are apt
to believe they are very deep because they are
unintelligible.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 592.
The candour which Horace shows is that which
distinguishes a critic from a caviller : he declares
that he is not offended at little faults, which may
be imputed to inadvertency.
ADDISON : Gtiardian.
When I read rules of criticism I inquire after
the works of the author, and by that means dis-
cover what he likes in a composition.
ADDISON : Guardian.
I never knew a critic who made it his business
to lash the faults of other writers that was i t m
guilty of greater himself; as the hangman is
generally a worse malefactor than the criminal
that suffers by his hand. ADDISON.
CRITICISM.
If the critic has published nothing but rules
and observations in criticism, I then consider
whether there be a propriety and elegance in his
thoughts and words, clearness and delicacy in
his remarks, wit and good breeding in his rail-
lery. ADDISON.
They publish their ill-natured discoveries with
\ secret pride, and applaud themselves for the
singularity of their judgment, which has found
a flaw in what the generality of mankind ad-
mires. ADDISON.
How often is a person whose intentions are to
do good by the works he publishes, treated in as
scurrilous a manner as if he were an enemy to
mankind ! ADDISON.
To say of a celebrated piece that there are
faults in it, is, in effect, to say that the author of
it is a man. ADDISON.
A critic is a man who on all occasions is more
attentive to what is wanting than what is present.
ADDISON.
Nothing is so tiresome as the works of those
critics who write in a dogmatic way, without
language, genius, or imagination.
ADDISON.
Some men make their ignorance the measure
of excellence: these are, of course, very fas-
tidious critics ; for, knowing little, they can find
but little to like. W. ALLSTON.
Critics form a general character from the ob-
-servation of particular errors, taken in their own
oblique or imperfect views; which is as unjust
as to make a judgment of the beauty of a man's
'body from the shade it cast in such and such a
position. BROOME.
.Bring candid eyes unto the perusal of men's
works., and let not zoilism . . . blast any well-
intended labours. SIR T. BROWNE.
Scholars are men of peace : they bear no arms,
but their tongues are sharper than Actius' sword,
their pens carry further, and give a louder report,
than thunder. I had rather stand in the shock
of a basilisk than in the fury of a merciless pen.
SIR T. BROWNE.
Different from them are all the great critics.
They have taught us one essential rule. I think
th-e excellent and philosophic artist, a true judge
as well as a perfect follower of Nature, Sir
Joshua Reynolds, has somewhere applied it, or
something like it, in his own profession. It is
this: that, if ever we should find ourselves dis-
posed not.to admire those writers or artists (Livy
and Virgil, for instance, Raphael or Michael
Angelo) whom all the learned had admired, not
to follow our .own fancies, but to study them,
until we know how and what we ought to ad-
mire; and if we cannot arrive at this combina-
tion of admiration with knowledge, rather to
belifve that we are dull than that the rest of the
world has been imposed on. BURKE:
Appeal front the New to the Old
.Whigs, 1791.
Malherbe, on hearing a prose work of great
merit much extolled, drily asked if it would
reduce the price of bread ? Neither was his
appreciation of poetry much higher, when he
observed that a good poet was of no more ser-
vice to the church or the state than a good
player at nine-pins ! ! COLTON :
Lacon: Prefaa.
Modern criticism discloses that which it would
fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes
to disclose; it is, therefore, read by the discern-
ing, not to discover the merits of an author, t^t
the motives of his critic. COLTON : Lacon.
The same work will wear a different appear-
ance in the eyes of the same man, according to
the different views with which he reads it : if
merely for his amusement, his candour being in
less danger of a twist from interest or prejudice,
he is pleased with what is really pleasing, and
is not over-curious to discover a blemish, be-
cause the exercise of a minute exactness is not
consistent with his purpose. But if he once be-
comes a critic by trade, the case is altered. He
must then at any rate establish, if he can, an
opinion in every mind of his uncommon dis-
cernment, and his exquisite taste. This great
end he can never accomplish by thinking in the
track that has been beaten under the hoof of
public judgment. He must endeavour to con-
vince the world that their favourite authors have
more faults than they are aware of, and such as
they have never suspected. Having marked out
a writer universally esteemed, whom he finds it
for that very reason convenient to depreciate
and traduce, he will overlook some of his
beauties, he will faintly praise others, and in
such a manner as to make thousands, more
modest though quite as judicious as himself,
question whether they are beauties "l all.
COWPER :
To Rev. W. Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782.
Enough if every age produce t" r o or three
critics of this esoteric class, with hen* rxnd there
a reader to understand them. DE Q> INCEY.
Those hypercritics in English poetry differ
from the opinion of the Greek and Latin j idges,
from the Italians and French, and from .he
general taste of all ages. DRYDEN.
For want of these requisites, most of our in-
genious young men take up some cried-up
English poet, adore him, and imitate him, with-
out knowing wherein he is defective.
DRYDEN.
I should be glad if I could persuade him to
write such another critic on anything of mine;
for when he condemns any of my poems he
makes the world have a better opinion of them.
DRYDEN.
. 'Tis unjust that they who have not the least
notion of heroic writing should therefore con
demn the pleasure which others icceive from it,
because they cannot comprehend it.
DRYDEN.
CRITICISM.
There are limits to he set between the bold-
ness and rashness of a poet; but he must under-
stand these limits who pretends to judge, as well
as he who undertakes to write; and he who has
no liking to the whole ought in reason to be
excluded from censuring of the parts.
DRYDEN.
We are naturally displeased with an unknown
ciitic, as the ladies are with a lampooner, be-
cause we are bitten in the dark. DRYDEN
The most judicious writer is sometimes mis-
taken after all his care; but the hasty critic,
who judges on a view, is full as liable to be
deceived. DRYDEN.
They wholly mistake the nature of criticism
who think its business is principally to find
fault. DRYDEN.
" But are there not some works," interrupted
I, " that from the very manner of their com-
position must be exempt from criticism ; par-
ticularly such as profess to disregard its laws?"
" There is no work whatsoever but he can
criticise," replied the bookseller; " even though
you wrote in Chinese he would have a pluck at
you." GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter LI.
The ignorant critic and dull remarker can
readily spy blemishes in eloquence or morals,
whose sentiments are not sufficiently elevated to
observe a beauty ; but such are judges neither
of books nor of life: they can diminish no solid
reputation by their censure, nor bestow a lasting
character by their applause : in short, I found,
by my search, that such only confer real fame
upon others who have merit themselves to de-
serve it. GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter CIX.
As the art of criticism never made an orator
or a poet, though it enables us to judge of their
merits, so the comprehensive speculation of
modern times, which has compared and re-
viewed the manners of every age and country,
has never formed a wise government or a happy
people. ROBERT HALL:
Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis.
There is a certain race of men, that either
imagine it their duty, or make it their amuse-
n.ent, to hinder the reception of every work of
learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in
the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon
giving ignorance and envy the first notice of
a prey.
To these men, who distinguish themselves by
the appellation of critics, it is necessary for a
new author to find some means of recommen-
dation. It is probable that the most malignant
of these persecutors might be somewhat softened
and prevailed on for a short time to remit their
fury. DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 3.
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle,
was meant as a standard of judging well.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
A few wild blunders, and visible absurdities^
from which no work of such multiplicity was
ever free, may for a time furnish folly with
laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt;
but useful diligence will at last prevail, and
there can never be wanting some who dis
tinguish desert. DR. S. JOHNSON :
Pref. to A Dictionary of the Eng. Language.
Criticism, though dignified from the earliest
ages by the labours of men eminent for knowl-
edge and sagacity, has not yet attained the cer
tainty and stability of science.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
Manifold are the advantages of criticism when
thus studied as a rational science. In the first
place, a thorough acquaintance with the princi-
ples of the fine arts redoubles the pleasure we
derive from them. To the man who resigns
himself to feeling, without interposing any judg-
ment, poetry, music, painting, are mere pastime.
In the prime of life, indeed, they are delightful,
being supported by the force of novelty and the
heat of imagination ; but in time they lose their
relish, and are generally neglected in the ma-
turity of life, which disposes to more serious
and more important occupations. To those who
deal in criticism as a regular science governed
by just principles, and giving scope to judgment
as well as to fancy, the fine arts are a favourite
entertainment, and in old age maintain that
relish which they produce in the morning of
life. LORD KAMES.
Critics have done nearly the same in taste as
casuists have in morals ; both having attempted
to direct by rules, and limit by definitions,
matters which depend entirely on feeling and
sentiment ; and which are therefore so various
and extensive, and diversified by such nice and
infinitely graduated shades of difference, that*
they elude all the subtleties of logic and the in-
tricacies of calculation. Rules can never be
made so general as to comprehend every pos-
sible case, nor definitions so multifarious and
exact as to include every possible circumstance
or contingency. R. P. KNIGHT.
It may be laid down as an almost universal
rule that good poets are bad critics. Their
minds are under the tyranny of ten thousand
associations imperceptible to others. The worst
writer may easily happen to touch a spring which
is connected in their minds with a long succes-
sion of beautiful images. They are like the
gigantic slaves of Aladdin, gifted with match-
less power, but bound by spells so mighty that
when a child whom they could have crushed
touched a talisman, of whose secret they were
ignorant, they immediately became his vassais.
It has more than once happened to me to see
minds graceful and majestic as the Titania of
Shakspeare bewitched by the charms of an ass's
head, bestowing on it the fondest caresses, and
crowning it with the sweetest flowers.
LORD MACAULAY :
Criticisms on the Principal Italian Writers ;
No. I, Dante; Jan. 1824.
CRITICISM.
Quintilian applied to general literature the
same principles by which he had been accus-
tomed to judge of the declamations of his pupils.
He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric
not of the highest order. He speaks coldly of
the incomparable works of ./Eschylus. He ad-
nuros beyond expression, those inexhaustible
mines of commonplaces, the plays of Euripides.
He bestows a few vague words on the poetical
character of Homer. He then proceeds to con-
sider him merely as an orator. An orator
Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But
surely nothing is more remarkable in his ad-
mirable works than the art with which his
oratorical powers are made subservient to the
purposes of poetry. Nor can I think Quintilian
a great critic in his own province. Just as are
many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of
his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in
his thoughts that flavour which the soil of des-
potism generally communicates to all the fruits
of genius. Eloquence was, in his time, little
more than a condiment which served to stimu-
late in a despot the jaded appetite for panegyric,
nn amusement for the travelled nobles and the
blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is, there-
fore, with him rather a sport than a war; it is a
contest of foils, not of swords. He appears to
think more of the grace of the attitude than of
the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must
be acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that
this is an error to which Cicero has too often
given the sanction both of his precept and of
his example. LORD MACAULAY :
On the Athenian Orators, Aug. 1824.
The ages in which the masterpieces of im-
agination have been produced have by no means
been those in which taste has been most correct.
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical
faculty cannot exist together in their highest
perfection. The causes of this phenomenon it
is not difficult to assign. It is true that the man
who is best able to take a machine to pieces,
and who most clearly comprehends the manner
in which all its wheels and springs conduce to
its general effect, will be the man most compe-
tent to form another machine of similar power.
In all the branches of physical and moral science
which admit of perfect analysis he who can
resolve will be able to combine. But the anal-
ysis which criticism can effect of poetry is neces-
sarily imperfect. One element must forever
elude its researches; and that is the very ele-
ment by which poetry is poetry. In the descrip-
tion of nature, for example, a judicious reader
tvill easily detect an incongruous image. But
lie will find it impossible to explain in what
consists the art of a writer who in a few words
brings some spot before him so vividly that he
shall know it as if he had lived there from
childhood; while another, employing the same
materials, the same verdure, and the same
flowers, committing no inaccuracy, introducing
nothing which can be positively pronounced
superfluous, omitting nothing which can be
p-.isitively pronounced necessary, shall produce
no more effect than an advertisement of a capi-
al residence and a desirable pleasure-ground.
LORD MACAULAY:
John Dry den, Jan. 1828.
That critical discernment is not sufficient tc
make men poets, is generally allowed. Why \"
should keep them from becoming poets is not
perhaps, equally evident; but the fact is, that
poetiy requires not an examining but a believirg
frame of mind. Those feel it most, and write
it best, who forget that it is a work of art ; tc
whom its imitations, like the realities from which
they are taken, are subjects, not for connoisseur-
ship, but for tears and laughter, resentment and
affection ; who are too much under the influence
of the illusion to admire the genius which has
produced it ; who are too much frightened for
Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus to care
whether the pun about Outis be good or bad ;
who forget that such a person as Shakspeare
ever existed, while they weep and curse with
Lear. It is by giving faith to the creations of
the imagination that a man becomes a poet. It
is by treating those creations as deceptions, and
by resolving them, as nearly as possible, into
their elements, that he becomes a critic. In the
moment in which the skill of the artist is per-
ceived, the spell of the art is broken. These
considerations account for the absurdities into
which the greatest writers have fallen when they
have attempted to give general rules for com-
position, or to pronounce judgment on the works
of others. They are accustomed to analyze
what they feel ; they therefore perpetually refei
their emotions to causes which have not in the
slightest degree tended to produce them. They
feel pleasure in reading a book. They never
consider that this pleasure may be the effect of
ideas which some unmeaning expression, strik-
ing on the first link of a chain of associations,
may have called up in their own minds, that
they have themselves furnished to the author
the beauties which they admire.
LORD MACAULAY :
John Drycten, Jan. 1828.
The opinion of the great body of the reading
public is very materially influenced even by the
unsupported assertions of those who assume a
right to criticise. Nor is the public altogether
to blame on this account. Most even of those
who have really a great enjoyment in reading
are in the same state, with respect to a book, in
which a man who has never given particular
attention to the art of painting is wUh respeit
to a picture. Every man who has the least
sensibility or imagination derives a certain pleas-
ure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest
and finest intellect might, unless he had formed
his taste by contemplating the best pictures, be
easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs that
the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle
of art. If he deserves to be laughed at, it is
not for his ignorance of pictures, but for his
ignorance of men. He knows that there is a
delicacy of taste in painting which he does not
possess, that he cannot distinguish hands, as
CRITICISM.
practised judges 'listinguish them, that he is not
familiar with the finest models, that he has never
looked at them with close attention, and that,
when the general effect of a piece has pleased
him or displeased him, he has never troubled
himself to ascertain why. When, therefore,
people whom he thinks more competent to
judge than himself, and of whose sincerity he
entertains no doubt, assure him that a particular
work n exquisitely beautiful, he takes it for
granted that they must be in the right. He re-
turns to the examination, resolved to find or
imagine beauties; and, if he can work himself
up into something like admiration, he exults in
his own proficiency.
Just such is the manner in which nine readers
out of ten judge of a book. They are ashamed
to dislike what men who speak as having au-
thority declare to be good. At present, how-
ever contemptible a poem or a novel may be,
there is not the least difficulty in procuring
favourable notices of it from all sorts of pub-
lications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the
mean time, little or nothing is said on the other
side. The author and the publisher are inter-
ested in crying up the book. Nobody has any
very strong interest in crying it down. Those
who are best fitted to guide the public opinion
think it beneath them to expose mere nonsense,
and comfort themselves by reflecting that such
popularity cannot last. This contemptuous
levity has been carried too far. It is perfectly
true that reputations which have been forced
into an unnatural bloom fade almost as soon as
they have expanded ; nor have we any appre-
hensions that puffing will ever raise any scrib-
bler to the rank of a classic.
LORD MACAULAY :
Mr. Robert Montgomery's Poems, April, 1830.
It would be amusing to make a digest of the
irrational laws which bad critics have framed
for the government of poets. First in celebrity
and in absurdity stand the dramatic unities of
place and time. No human being has ever been
able to find anything that could, even by cour-
tesy, be called an argument for these unities,
except that they have been deduced from the
general practice of the Greeks. It requires no
very profound examination to discover that the
Greek dramas, often admirable as compositions,
are, as exhibitions of human character and human
life, far inferior to the English plays of the age
of Elizabeth. Eveiy scholar knows that the
dramatic part of the Athenian tragedies was at
first subordinate to the lyrical part. It would,
therefore, have been little less than a miracle if
the laws of the Athenian stage had been found
to suit plays in which there was no chorus. All
the greatest masterpieces of the dramatic art
have been composed in direct violation of the
unities, and could never have been composed if
the unities had not been violated. It is clear,
for example, that such a character as that of
Hamlet could never have been developed within
the limits to which Alfieri confined himself. Yet
such was the reverence of literary men during
the last century for these unities that Johnson,
who, much to his honour, took the opposite side,
was, as he says, " frightened at his own temer-
ity," and ''- afraid to stand against the authorities
which might be produced against him."
There are other rules of the same kind with-
out end. " Shakspeare," says Rymer, " ought
not to have made Othello black ; for the hero of
a tragedy ought always to be white."
" Milton," says another critic, " ought not to
have taken Adam for his hero; for the hero of
an epic poem ought always to be victorious."
" Milton," says another, "ought not to have
put so many similes into his first book; for the
first book of an epic poem ought always to be
the most unadorned. There are no similes in
the first book of the Iliad."
"Milton," says another, "ought not to have
placed in an epic poem such lines as these :
" ' While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither.' "
And why not? The critic is ready with a reason,
a lady's reason. " Such lines," says he, " are
not, it must be allowed, unpleasing to the ear;
but the redundant syllable ought to be confined
to the drama, and not admitted into epic poetry."
As to the redundant syllable in heroic rhyme on
serious subjects, it has been, from the time of
Pope downward, proscribed by the general con-
sent of all the correct school. No magazine
would have admitted so incorrect a couplet as
that of Drayton :
" As when we lived untouch'd with these disgraces,
\Vhenas our kingdom was our dear embraces."
Another law of heroic rhyme, which, fifty years
ago, was considered as fundamental, was, that
there should be a pause, a comma at least, at the
end of every couplet. It was also provided that
there should never be a full stop except at the
end of a line. LORD MACAULAY:
Moore's Life of Lord Byron, June, 1831.
The correctness which the last century prized
so much resembles the correctness of those
pictures of the garden of Eden whtch we see
in old Bibles. We have an exact square, en-
closed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel,
and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge
in the centre, rectangular beds of flowers, a long
canal, neatly bricked and railed in, the tree of
knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind
the Tuilleries, standing in the centre of the
grand alley, the snake twined round it, the
man on the right hand, the woman on the left,
and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round
them. In one sense the picture is correct
enough. That is to say, the squares are correct ;
the circles are correct; the man and the woman
are in a most correct line with the tree; and the
snake forms a most correct spiral.
But if there were a painter so gifted that he
could place on the canvas that glorious para-
dise seen by the interior eye of him whose out-
ward sight had failed with long watching and
labouring for liberty and truth, if there we>-e a
painter who could set before us the mazes of
'54
CRITICISM.
the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of
myrtles, the flowery meadows, the grottoes over-
hung by vines, the forests shining with Hes-
perian fruit and with the plumage of gorgeous
birds, the mossy shade of that nuptial bower
which showered down roses on the sleeping
lovers, what should we think of a connoisseur
who should tell us that this painting, though
finer than the absurd picture in the old Bible,
was no. so correct ? Surely we should answer,
It i.s both finer and more correct; and it is finer
because it is more correct. It is not made up
of correctly drawn diagrams ; but it is a correct
riming, a worthy representation of that which
is intended to represent.
LORD MACAULAY:
Moore's Life of Lord Byron,
He took it for granted that the kind of poetry
which flourished in his own time, which he had
been accustomed to hear praised from his child-
hood, and which he had himself written with
success, was the best kind of poetry. In his
biographical work he has repeatedly laid it
down as an undeniable proposition that during
the latter part of the seventeenth century, and
the earlier part of the eighteenth, English poetry
had been in a constant progress of improvement.
Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope had been,
according to him, the great reformers. He
judged of all works of the imagination by the
standard established among his own contempo-
raries. Though he allowed Homer to have
been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to
have thought the ^ineid a greater poem than the
Iliad. Indeed, he well might have thought so ;
for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He
pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of
Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be reprinted. He
could see no merit in our fine old English bal-
lads, and always spoke with the most provoking
contempt of Percy's fondness for them.
LORD MACAULAY :
Bos-welts Life of Johnson, Sept. 1831.
" It is an uncontrolled truth," says Swift,
"that no man ever made an ill figure who
understood his own talents, nor a good one who
mistook them." Every day brings with it fresh
illustrations of this weighty saying; but the best
commentary that we remember is the history of
Samuel Crisp. Men like him have their proper
place, and it is a most important one, in the
Commonwealth of Letters. It is by the judg-
ment of such men that the rank of authors is
finally determined. It is neither to the multi-
tude, nor to the few who are gifted with great
creative genius, that we are to look for sound
critical decisions. The multitude, unacquainted
with the best models, are captivated by whatever
stuns and dazzles them. They deserted Mrs.
Siddons to run after Master Betty; and they
prefer, we have no doubt, Jack Sheppard to
Van Artevelde. A man of great original genius,
on the other hand, a man who has attained to
mastery in some high walk of art, is by no means
to be implicitly trusted as a judge of the per-
formance of others. The erroneous decisions
pronounced by such men are without number.
It is commonly supposed that jealousy makes
them unjust. But a more creditable ex| lanation
may easily be found. The very excellence of
a work shows that some of the faculties of the
author have been developed at the expense of the
rest; for it is not given to the human intellect to
expand itself widely in all directions at once, and
to be at the same time gigantic and well pro
portioned. Whoever becomes pre-eminent in
any art, nay, in any style of art, generally does
so by devoting himself with intense and exclu-
sive enthusiasm to the pursuit of one kind of
excellence. His perception of other kinds of
excellence is therefore loo often impaired. Out
of his own department he praises and blames at
random ; and is far less to be trusted than the
mere connoisseur, who produces nothing, and
whose business is only to judge and enjoy. One
painter is distinguished by his exquisite finish-
ing. He toils day after day to bring the veins
of a cabbage-leaf, the folds of a lace veil, the
wrinkles of an old woman's face, nearer and
nearer to perfection. In the time which he em-
ploys on a square foot of canvas, a master of a
different order covers the walls of a palace with
gods burying giants under mountains, or makes
the cupola of a church alive with seraphim and
martyrs. The more fervent the passion of each
of these artists for his art, the higher the merit
of each in his own line, the more unlikely it is
that they will justly appreciate each other. Many
persons who never handled a pencil probably do
far more justice to Michael Angelo than would
have been done by Gerard Douw, and far more
justice to Gerard Douw than would have been
done by Michael Angelo. It is the same with
literature. Thousands who have no spark of
the genius of Dryden or Wordsworth do to
Dryden the justice which has never been done
by Wordsworth, and to Wordsworth the justice
which, we suspect, would never have been
done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, Richard-
son, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the
great body of intelligent and well-informed
men. But Gray could see no merit in Rasselas;
and Johnson could see no merit in the Bard.
Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig; and
Richardson perpetually expressed contempt and
disgust for Fielding's lowness.
LORD MACAULAY:
Madatne D'Arblay, Jan. 1843,
Fastidiousness, the discernment of defects,
and the propensity to seek them, in natural
beauty, are not the proofs of taste, but the evi-
dences of its absence ; it is, at least, an insensi-
bility to beauty; it is worse than that, since it is
a depravity when pleasure is found in the dis-
covery of such defects, real or imaginary. And
he who affects this because he considers it an
evidence of his taste, is, at least, pitiably igno-
rant ; while not seldom punished by the con-
version of that affectation into a reality. And
it is the same in criticism as applied to works
of literature. It is not the eye for faults, but
beauties, that constitutes the real critic, in this,
CRITICISM.
155
as in all el.e: he who is most discerning in the
beauties of poet y is the man of taste, the true
judge, the only critic. The critic, as he is
currently termed, who is discerning in nothing
but faults, may care little to be told that this is
the mark of unamiable dispositions or of bad
passions; but he might not be equally easy
were he convinced that he thus gives the most
absolute proofs of ignorance and want of taste.
DR. J. MACCULLOCH.
Get your enemies to read your works, in order
Jo mend them ; for your friend is so much your
econd-self that he will judge too like you.
POPE : Thoughts on Various Subjects.
You are so good a critic that it is the greatest
happiness of the modern poets that you do not
hear their works; and, next, that you are not so
arrant a critic as to damn them, like the rest,
without hearing. POPE.
True it is that the talents for criticism (namely,
smartness, quick censure, vivacity of remark ;
indeed, all but acerbity) seem rather the gifts
of youth than of old age. POPE.
A critic supposes he has done his part if
he proves a writer to have failed in an expres-
sion : and can it be wondered at if the poets
seem resolved not to own themselves in any
error? for as long as one side despises'a well-
meant endeavour the other will not be satisfied
with a moderate approbation. POPE.
A jest upon a poor wit at first might have
had an epigrammatist for its father, and been
afterwards gravely understood by some painful
collector. POPE.
It is very much an image of that author's
writing; who has an agreeableness that charms
us, without correctness ; like a mistress whose
faults we see, but love her with them all.
POPE.
Sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves
better usage than a bad critic : a man may be
the former merely through the misfortune of an
ill judgment; but he cannot be the latter without
both that and an ill temper. POPE.
'Tis necessary a writing critic should under-
stand how to write. And though every writer
is not bound to show himself in the capacity of
critic, every writing critic is bound to show him-
self capable of being a writer; for if he be
apparently impotent in this latter kind, he is to
be denied all title or character in the other.
SHAFTESBURY.
A. poet that fails in writing becomes often a
morose critic. The weak and insipid white
wine makes at length excellent vinegar.
SHENSTONE.
It is a particular observation I have always
made, that of all mortals a Critic is the silliest;
for, by inuring himself to examine all things,
whether they are of consequence or not, he
never looks upon anything but with a design of
passing sentence upon it ; by which means he is
never a companion, but always a censor. This
makes him earnest upon trifles, and dispute on
the most indifferent occasions with vehemence.
If he offers to speak or write, that talent, which
should approve the work of the other faculties
pfevents their operations.
SIR R. STEELE : Taller, No. 29.
A thorough Critic is a sort of Puritan in the
polite world. As an enthusiast in religion
stumbles at the ordinary occurrences of life, if
he cannot quote Scripture examples on the
occasion ; so the Critic is never safe in hJ3
speech or writing, without he has, among the
.celebrated writers, an authority for the truth of
his sentence.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 29.
I hope, Sir, you will not take this amiss : I
can assure you, I have a profound respect for
you, which makes me write this with the same
disposition with which Longinus bids us read
Homer and Plato. When in reading, says he,
any of those celebrated authors, we meet with
a passage to which we cannot well reconcile our
reasons, we ought firmly to believe, that were
those great wits present to answer for them-
selves, we should to our wonder be convinced
that we are only guilty of the mistakes before
attributed to them.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 59.
The malignant deity Criticism dwelt on the
top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla : Mo-
mus found her extended in her den upon the
spoils of numberless volumes half devoured.
At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and
husband, blind with age ; at her left, Pride, her
mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper
herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sis-
ter, light of foot, hoodwinked and headstrong,
yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her
played her children, Noise and Impudence,
Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry,
and 111 Manners. SWIFT.
There is nothing so bad but a man may lay
hold of something about it that will afford mat-
ter of excuse; nor nothing so excellent but a
man may fasten upon something belonging to it
whereby to reduce it. TlLLOTSON.
Good sense is the foundation of criticism ,
this it is that has made Dr. Bentley and Bp.
Hare the two greatest that ever were in the
world. Not that good sense alone will be suffi-
cient. For that considerable part of it, emending
a corrupt text, there must be a certain sagacity,
which is so distinguishing a quality in Dr.
Bentley. BISHOP WARBURTON :
To Dr. Birch: Nichols's Lit. Ante., ii. 96.
Some persons, from the secret stimulations of
vanity or envy, despise a valuable book, and
throw contempt upon it by wholesale.
DR. I. WATTS.
Let there be no wilful perversion of another's
meaning; no sudden seizure of a lapsed sylla-
ble to play upon it. DR. I. WATTS
i S 6
CROAKERS. CROMWELL. CUNNING.
Another sort of judges will decide in favour
of an author, or will pronounce him a mere
blunderer, according to the company they have
kept. DR- I' WATTS.
Every critic has his own hypothesis: if the
common text be not favourable to his opinion,
a various lection shall be made authentic.
DR. I. WATTS.
They will endeavour to diminish the honour
of the best treatise rather than suffer the little
mistakes of the author to pass unexposed.
DR. I. WATTS.
If the remarker would but once try to out-
shine the author by writing a better book on the
same subject, he would soon be convinced of his
own insufficiency. DR. I. WATTS.
Such parts of writing as are stupid or silly,
false or mistaken, should become subjects of
occasional criticism. DR. I. WATTS.
Show your critical learning in the etymology
of terms, the synonymous and the paronymous
or kindred names. DR. I. WATTS.
CROAKERS.
I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in
those perverted minds which have no delight
but in contemplating the supposed distress and
predicting the immediate ruin of their country.
These birds of evil presage at all times have
grated our ears with their melancholy song; and,
by some strange fatality or other, it has gener-
ally happened that they have poured forth their
loudest and deepest lamentations at the periods
of our most abundant prosperity.
BURKE :
Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter III., 1797.
CROMWELL.
Oliver Cromwell united in a very high degree
the characters of the politician and general, and
occasionally assumed those of the buffoon and
the preacher. . . . He is an amazing instance
of what ambition, heated by enthusiasm, re-
strained by judgment, disguised by hypocrisy,
and aided by natural vigour of mind, can do.
He was never oppressed with the weight, or per-
plexed with the intricacy, of affairs; but his deep
penetration, indefatigable activity, and invinci-
ble resolution seemed to render him master of
all events. He persuaded without eloquence;
and exacted obedience more from the terror of
his nams than the vigour of his administration.
GRANGER.
The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar
kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic
power. He at first fought sincerely and man-
fully for the Parliament, and never deserted it
ill it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it
by force, it was not till he found that the few
members who remained after so many deaths,
secessions, and expulsions were desirous to ap-
propriate to themselves a power which they held
only in trust, and to inflict upon England the
curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when
thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he
did not assume unlimited power. He gave the
country a constitution far more perfect than any
which had at that time been known in the world.
He reformed the representative system in a man-
ner which has extorted praise even from Lord
Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed
the first place in the commonwealth ; but with
powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch
stadtholder or an American president. He
gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment
of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative
authority, not even reserving to himself a veto
on its enactments; and he did not require that
the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his
family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances
of the time and the opportunities which he had
of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, he
A-ill not lose by comparison with Washington or
Bolivar.
LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.
CUNNING.
At the same time that I think discretion the
most useful talent that man can be master of, I
look upon cunning to be the accomplishment
of little, mean, ungenerous minds. Discretion
points out the noblest ends to us, and pursues
the most proper and laudable methods of attain-
ing them. Cunning has only private selfish
aims, and sticks at nothing which may make
them succeed. Discretion has large and ex-
tended views, and, like a well- formed eye, com-
mands a whole horizon. Cunning is a kind of
short-sightedness, that discovers the minutest
objects which are near at hand, but is not able
to discern things at a distance.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 225.
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a
guide to us in all the duties of life : cunning is
a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our
immediate interests and welfare. ... In short,
cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and
may pass upon weak men, in the same mannei
as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity
for wisdom.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 225
We take cunning for a sinister, or crooked,
wisdom, and certainly there is a great difference
between a cunning man and a wise man, not
only'in point of honesty, but in point of ability.
... In things that a man would not be seen in
himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the
name of the world ; as to say, " The world says,"
or " There is a speech abroad." ... It is a point
of cunning to let fall those words in a man's
own name which he would have another man
CANNING. CURIOSITY.
'57
learn and use, and thereupon take advantage.
... It is a good point of cunning for a man to
shape the answer he would have in his own
words and propositions; for it makes the other
party stick the less. . . . But these small wares
and petty points of cunning are infinite, and it
were a good deed to make the best of them ; for
that nothing dot h more hurt in a state than that
cunning men pass for wise.
LORD BACON :
Essay XX 111., Of Cunning.
Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but
(he low mimic of wisdom. BoLlNGHROKE.
Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from
open day. He that walks in the sunshine goes
boldly forward by the nearest way ; he sees that
where the path is straight and even he may pro-
ceed in security, and where it is rough and
crooked he easily complies with the turns and
avoids the obstructions. But the traveller in
the dusk fears more as he sees less ; he knows
there may be danger, and therefore suspects
that he is never safe ; tries every step before he
fixes his foot, and shrinks at every noise, lest
violence should approach him. Wisdom com-
prehends at once the end and the means, esti-
mates easiness or difficulty, and is cautious,
or confident, in due proportion. Cunning dis-
covers little at a time, and has no other means
of certainty than multiplication of stratagems and
superfluity of suspicion. The man of cunning
always considers that he can never be too safe,
and therefore always keeps himself enveloped
in a mist, impenetrable, as he hopes, to the eye
of rivalry or curiosity. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Cunning leads to knavery ; it is but a step
from one to the other, and that very slippery :
lying only makes the difference ; add that to
cunning, and it is knavery. LA BRUYERE.
Discourage cunning in a child : cunning is
the ape of wisdom. LOCKE.
Nobody was ever so cunning as to conceal
their being so ; and everybody is shy and dis-
trustful of crafty men. LOCKE.
Cunning men can be guilty of a thousand in-
justices without being discovered; or at least
without being punished. SWIFT.
By this means it is that a cunning man is so
far from being ashamed of being esteemed such,
that he secretly rejoices in it. It has been a sort
of maxim that the greatest art is to conceal art;
but, I know not how, among some people we
meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear
cunning. There is Polypragon makes it the
whole business of his life to be thought a cun-
ning fellow, and thinks it a much greater char-
acter to be terrible than to be agreeable. "When
it has once entered a man's head to have an
ambition to be thought crafty, all other evils are
necessary consequences. To deceive is the im-
mediate endeavour of him who is proud of the
capacity of doing it.
SIR R. STEELE: Taller, No. 191.
It is a remarkable circumstance in reference
to cunning persons, that they are often deficient,
not only in comprehensive far-sighted wisdom,
but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.
WHATELY:
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Cunning.
The cunning are often deceived by those who
have no such intention. When a plain, straight-
forward man declares plainly his real motives or-
designs, they set themselves to guess what these
are, and hit on every possible solution but the
right, taking for granted that he cannot mean
what he says. Bacon's remark on this we have
already given in the " Antitheta on Simulation
and Dissimulation :" " He who acts in all thing*
openly does not deceive the less; for most pei-
sons either do not understand or do not believe
him." WHATKI.Y :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Cunniti"
CURIOSITY.
He that questioneth much shall learn much,
and content much ; but especially if he apply
his questions to the skill of the persons whom
he asketh ; for he shall give them occasion to
please themselves in speaking, and himself shall
continually gather knowledge : but let his ques-
tions not be troublesome, for that is fit for a
poser; and let him be sure to leave other men
their turns to speak. LORD BACON :
Essay XXXI1L, Of Discourse.
A wise man is not inquisitive about things
impertinent. BROOME.
The first and the simplest emotion which we
discover in the human mind is curiosity. By
curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see
children perpetually running from place to place,
to hunt out something new ; they catch with
great eagerness, and with very little choice, at
whatever comes before them ; their attention is
engaged by everything, because everything has,
in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to
recommend it. But, as those things which en-
gage us merely by their novelty cannot attach
us for any length of time, curiosity is the most
superficial of all the affections ; it changes its
object perpetually; it has an appetite which is
very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has
always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness,
and anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, is &
very active principle ; it quickly runs over the
greatest part of its objects ; and soon exhausts
the variety which is commonly to be met with in
nature ; the same things make frequent returns,
and they return with less and less of any agree
able effect. BURKE:
On the Stiblime and Beautiful, 1756.
Desire to know how and why, curiosity : so
that man is distinguished not only by his reason,
but also by this singular passion, from all other
animals. T. HOBBJTS.
i 5 8
CURIOSITY. CUSTOM.
Curiosity in children nature has provided to
remove that ignorance they were born with;
which, without this busy inquisitiveness, will
make them dull. LOCKE.
One great reason why many children abandon
themselves wholly to silly sports, and trifle away
all their time insipidly, is because they have
found their curiosity baulked. LOCKE.
If their curiosity leads them to ask what they
should not know, it is better to tell them plainly
that it is a thing that belongs not to them to know,
than to pop them off with a falsehood.
LOCKE.
A person who is too nice an observer of the
business of the crowd, like one who is too curi-
ous in observing the labour of the bees, will
often be stung for his curiosity. POPE.
CUSTOM.
I have not here considered custom as it makes
things easy, but as it renders them delightful :
and though others have made the same reflec-
tions, it is possible they may have drawn those
uses from it. ADDISON.
A froward retention of custom is as turbulent
a thing as an innovation ; and they that rever-
ence too much old times are but a scorn to the
new. It were good, therefore, that men in their
innovations would follow the example of time
itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but
quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXV., Of Innovations.
Men's thoughts are much according to their
inclination; their discourses are speeches accord-
ing to their learning and infused opinions; but
their deeds are after as they have been accus-
tomed : and therefore, as Machiavel well noteth
(though in an evil-favoured instance), there is
no trusting to the force of nature, nor to the
bravery of words, except it be corroborate by
custom. . . . Many examples may be put of the
force of custom, both upon mind and body :
therefore, since custom is the principal magis-
trate of man's life, let men by all means en-
deavour to obtain good customs. Certainly,
custom is most perfect when it beginneth m
young years : this we call education, which is,
in effect, but an early custom.
LORD BACON:
Essay XL., Of Custom and Education.
Let not atheists lay the fault of their sins upon
human nature, which have their prevalence from
long custom and inveterated habit.
BENTLEY.
What we have always seen done in one way,
we are apt to imagine there was but that one
way. BENTLEY.
We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst
we are creatures vehemently desirous of novelty,
we are as strongly attached to habit and custom.
But it is the nature of things which hold us by
custom, to affect us very little whilst we are in
possession of them, but strongly when they are
absent. I remember to have frequented a cer-
tain place every day for a long time together
and I may truly say that, so far from finding
pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort ot
weariness and disgust; I came, I went, I re-
turned, without pleasure : yet if by any means I
passed by the usual time of my going thither, I
was remarkably uneasy, and was not quiet till
I had got into my old track. BURKE:
On the Sublime and Beautiful, 1756
Use makes practice easy : and practice begets
custom, and a habit of things, to facilitate what
thou couldst not conceive attainable at the first
undertaking. T. FULLER.
What is early received into any considerable
strength of impress grows into our tender na
lures, and therefore is of difficult remove.
GLANVILL.
Of all tyrants custom is that which to sustain
itself stands most in need of the opinion which
is entertained of its power; its only strength lies
in that which is attributed to it. A single at-
tempt to break the yoke soon shows us its
fragility. But the chief property of custom is to
contract our ideas, like our movements, within
the circle it has traced for us ; it governs us by
the terror it inspires for any new and untried
condition. It shows us the walls of the prison
within which we are enclosed, as the boundary
of the world; beyond that, all is undefined,
confusion, chaos; it almost seems as though we
should not have air to breathe. Women espe-
cially, liable to that fear which springs from
ignorance, rather than from knowledge of what
one has to fear, easily allow themselves to be
governed by custom ; but when once broken
they also as easily forget it. A man has less
trouble in making up his mind to a change of
condition ; a woman has less in supporting it
she accustoms herself to it for the same reason
that she has hitherto done so, and will still con-
tinue to do so.
In the total overthrow which has produced so
many changes of fortune among us, we have
seen men extricate themselves by their courage
and industry; and some by unremitting exertion
have been able to return to nearly their former
position ; but nearly all the women, almost
without exception, accommodated themselves tc
their new situation, and they have been quite
astonished to learn so quickly and so easily that
what one woman has done another is able to do
also. GUIZOT.
Tnat which wisdom did first begin, and hath
been with good men long continued, challenged!
allowance of them that succeed, although it
plead for itself nothing. HOOKER.
The custom of evil makes the heart obdurate
against whatsoever instructions to the contraiy.
HOOKER.
CUSTOM. DANTE.
159
Men will not bend their wits to examine
whether things wherewith they have been ac-
customed be good or evil. HOOKER.
By custom, practice, and patience, all diffi-
culties and hardships, whether of body or of
fortune, are made easy. L' ESTRANGE.
Custom, a greater power than nature, seldom
fails to make them worship. LOCKE.
Trials wear us into a liking of what possibly,
in the first essay, displeased us. LOCKE.
Custom is a violent and treacherous school-
mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and un-
perceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but
having by this gentle and humble beginning,
with the benefit of time fixed and established it,
she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic coun-
tenance, against which we have no more the
courage or the power so much as to lift up our
eyes. MONTAIGNE.
They delight rather to lean to their old cus-
toms, though they be more unjust, and more
inconvenient. EDMUND SPENSER.
Pitch upon the best course of life, and custom
will render it the most easy. TILLOTSON.
Custom has an ascendency over the under-
standing. DR. I. WATTS.
There is a respect due to mankind which
should incline even the wisest of men to follow
innocen f customs. DR. I. WATTS.
In all the serious and important affairs of life
men are attached to what they have been used
to; in matters of ornament they covet novelty;
in all systems and institutions in all the ordi-
nary business of life in all fundamentals
they cling to what is the established course ; in
matters of detail in what lies as it were on the
surface they seek variety. Man may, in refer-
ence to this point, be compared to a tree, whose
stem and main branches stand year after year,
but whose leaves and flowers are fresh every
season. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Innovations.
It is to be observed that at the present day it
is common to use the words " custom" and
" habit" as synonymous, and often to employ
the latter where Bacon would have used the
former. But, strictly speaking, they denote
respectively the cause and the effect. Repeated
acts constitute the " custom ;" and the " habit"
is the condition of mind or body thence result-
ing. For instance, a man who has been ac-
customed to rise at a certain hour will have
acquired the habit of waking and being ready
to rise as soon as that hour arrives. And one
who has made it his custom to drink drams will
have fallen into the Jiabit of craving for that
stimulus, and of yielding to that craving ; and
so of the rest. WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacorfs Essay, Of Custom and
Education.
Custom will often blind one to the good as
well as to the evil effects of any long-established
system. WHATELY :
Lects. on Polit. Econ., Appendix E.
DANTE.
The style of Dante is, if not his highest, per-
haps his most peculiar excellence. I know
nothing with which it can be compared. The
noblest models of Greek composition must yield
to it. His words are the fewest and the best
which it is possible to use. The first expression
in which he clothes his thoughts is always so
energetic and comprehensive that amplification
would only injure the effect. There is probably
ro writer in any language who has presented so
many strong pictures to the mind. Yet there is
probably no writer equally concise. This per-
fection of style is the principal merit of the
Paradise, which, as I have already remarked, is
by no means equal in other respects to the two
preceding parts of the poem. The force and
felicity of the diction, however, irresistibly at-
tract the reader through the theological lectures
and the sketches of ecclesiastical biography
with which this division of the work too much
abounds. It may seem almost absurd to quote
particular specimens of an eloquence which is
diffused over all his hundred cantos. I will,
however, instance the third canto of the Inferno,
and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages in-
comparable in their kind. The merit of the lat
ter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical ;
nor can I recollect anything in the great Athe-
nian speeches which equals it in force of invec-
tive and bitte.' ness of sarcasm. I have heard
the most eloquent statesman of the age remark
that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer
who ought to be most attentively studied by
every man who desires to attain oratorical excel-
lence. LORD MACAULAY :
Criticisms on the Principal Italian Writers;
No. I, Dante; Jan. 1824.
Othello is perhaps the greatest work in the
world! From what does it derive its power?
From the clouds? From the ocean? From the
mountains ? Or from love strong as death, and
100
DANTE. DAY OF JUDGMENT.
jealousy cruel as the grave ? What is it that
we go forth to see in Hamlet? Is it a reed
shaken with the wind? A small celandine? A
bed of daffodils? Or is it to contemplate a
mighty and wayward mind laid bare before us
to the inmost recesses? It may perhaps be
doubted whether the lakes and the hills are bet-
ter fitted for the education of a poet than the
dusty streets of a huge capital. Indeed, who
is not tired to death with pure description of
scenery ? Is it not the fact that external objects
never strongly excite our feelings but when they
are contemplated with reference to man, as illus-
trating his destiny or as influencing his charac-
ter ? The most beautiful object in the world, it
will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. But who
that can analyze his feelings is not sensible that
she owes her fascination less to grace of outline
and delicacy of colour than to a thousand asso-
ciations which, often unperceived by ourselves,
connect those qualities with the source of our
existence, with the nourishment of our infancy,
with the passions of our youth, with the hopes
of our age, with elegance, with vivacity, with
tenderness, with the strongest natural instincts,
with the dearest of social ties?
To those who think thus, the insensibility
of the Florentine poet to the beauties of nature
will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On
mankind no writer, with the exception of Shak-
speare, has looked with a more penetrating eye.
LORD MACAULAY :
Criticisms on the Principal Italian
Writers; No. I.
I cannot refrain, however, from saying a few
words upon the translations of the Divine Com-
edy. Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the
original is rapid and forcible. The strange
measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I
know, invented, is most unfit for such a work.
Translations ought never to be written in a verse
which requires much command of rhyme. The
stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes, and the
thoughts of the unfortunate author are alter-
nately racked and curtailed to fit their new re-
ceptacle. The abrupt and yet consecutive style
of Dante suffers more than that of any other
poet by a version diffuse in style and divided
into paragraphs for they deserve no other name
of equal length. Nothing can be said in
favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is better
than Boyd's. His mind was a tolerable speci-
men of filigree work, rather elegant, and very
feeble. All that can be said for his best works
is that they are neat. Alt that can be said
against his worst is that they are stupid. He
might have translated Metastasio tolerably. But
he was utterly unable to do justice to the
" rime e aspre e chiocce,
Come si converrebbe al tristo buco."
Inferno, Canto xxxii.
I turn with pleasure from these wretched per-
formances to Mr. Gary's translation. It is a
work which well -Jer.erves a separate discussion,
%HU cm wni-i;, if this article were not already
too long, I could dwell with great pleasure. At
present I will only say that there is no other
version in the world which so fully proves that
the translator is himself a man of poetical genius.
Those who are ignorant of the Italian language
should read it to become acquainted with the
Divine Comedy. Those who are most intimate
with Italian literature should read it for its origi-
nal merits ; and I believe that they will find it
difficult to determine whether the author deserves
most praise for his intimacy with the language
of Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over
his own. LORD MACAULAY :
Criticisms on the Principal Italian
Writers; No. I.
DAY OF JUDGMENT.
As the Supreme Being is the only proper judge
of our perfections, so he is the only fit rewarder
of them. This is a consideration that comes
home to our interest, as the other adapts itself to
our ambition. And what could the most aspir-
ing or the most selfish man desire more, were
he to form the notion of a Being to whom he
would recommend himself, than such a knowl-
edge as can discover the least appearance of per-
fection in him, .and such a goodness as will pro-
portion a reward to it ?
Let the ambitious man, therefore, turn all his
desire of fame this way ; and, that he may pro-
pose to himself a fame worthy of his ambition,
let him consider, that if he employs his abilities
to the best advantage, the time will come when
the Supreme Governor of the world, the great
Judge of mankind, who sees every degree of
.perfection in others, and possesses all possible
perfection in himself, shall proclaim his worth
before men and angels, and pronounce to him
in the presence of the whole creation that best
and most significant of applauses, " Well done,
thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into
thy Master's joy."
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 257.
As a thinking man cannot but be very much
affected with the idea of his appearing in the
presence of that Being " whom none can see
and live," he must be much more affected when
he considers that this Being whom he appears
before will examine all the actions of his past
life, and reward and punish him accordingly. I
must confess that I think there is no scheme of
religion besides that of Christianity which can
possibly support the most virtuous person under
this thought. Let a man's innocence be what it
will, let his virtues rise to the highest pitch of
perfection attainable in this life, there will be
stilf in him so many secret sins, so many human
frailties, so many offences of ignorance, passions,
and prejudice, so many unguarded words and
thoughts, and, in short, so many defects in his
best actions, that, without the advantages of such
an expiation and atonement as Christianity has
revealed to us, it is impossible that he should be
DAY OF JUDGMENT.
161
cleared before his Sovereign Judge, or that he
should be able to " stand in his sight." Our
holy religion suggests to us the only means
whereby our guilt may be taken away, and our
imperfect obedience accepted.
ADUISON : Spectator, No. 513.
True quality is neglected, virtue is oppressed,
and vice triumphant. The last day will assign
to every one a station suitable to his character.
ADDISON.
A time there will be when all these unequal
distributions of good and evil shall be set right,
and the wisdom of all his transactions made as
clear as the noonday. ATTERBURY.
God will indeed judge the world in righteous-
ness ; but it is by an evangelical, not a legal,
righteousness, and by the intervention of the
man Christ Jesus, who is the Saviour as well as
the Judge of the world. ATTERBURY.
How can we think of appearing at that tribu-
nal without being able to give a ready answer to
the questions which he shall then put to us about
the poor and the afflicted, the hungry and the
naked, the sick and the imprisoned ?
ATTERBURY.
What confusion of face shall we be under
when that grand inquest begins ; when an ac-
count of our opportunities of doing good, and a
particular of our use or misuse of them, is given
in ! ATTERBURY.
The secret manner in which acts of mercy
ought to be performed requires this public mani-
festation of them at the great day.
ATTERBURY.
At the day of general account good men are
then to be consigned over to another state, a
state of everlasting love and chanty.
ATTERBURY.
God hath reserved many things to his own
resolution, whose determinations we cannot
hope from flesh; but with reverence must sus-
pend unto that great day whose justice shall
either condemn our curiosity or resolve our dis-
quisitions. SIR T. BROWNE.
It may justly serve for matter of extreme ter-
ror to the wicked, whether they regard the dread-
fulness of the day in which they shall be tried,
or the quality of the judge by whom they are to
be tried. HAKEWILL : On Providence.
What greater heart-breaking and confusion
can there be to one than to have all his secret
faults laid open, and the sentence of condemna-
tion passed upon him? HAKEWILL.
At the day of judgment, the attention excited
by the surrounding scene, the strange aspect of
nature, the dissolution of the elements, and the
last trump, will have no other effect than to
cause the reflections of the sinner to return with
a more overwhelming tide on his own character,
his sentence, his unchanging destiny; and
amidst the innumerable millions who surround
him, he will mourn apart. It is thus the Chris-
tian minister should endeavour to prepare the
tribunal of conscience, and turn the eyes of every
one of his hearers on himself.
ROBERT HALL :
Discouragements and Supports of ike
Cli ristia n Min isler.
Methinks neither the voice of the archangel,
nor the trump of God, nor the dissolution of the
elements, nor the face of the Judge itself, from
which the heavens will flee away, will be so dis-
maying and terrible to these men as the sight
of the poor members of Christ; whom, having
spurned and rejected in the days of their humili-
ation, they will then behold with amazement
united to their Lord, covered with his glory,
and seated on his throne. How will they be
astonished to see them surrounded with so much
majesty ! How will they cast down their eyes
in their presence ! How will they curse that
gold which will then eat their flesh as with fire,
and that avarice, that indolence, that voluptuous-
ness which will entitle them to so much misery!
You will then learn that the imitation of Christ
is the only wisdom : you will then be convinced
it is better to be endeared to the cottage than
admired in the palace; when to have wiped the
tears of the afflicted, and inherited the prayers
of the widow and the fatherless, shall be found
a richer patrimony than the favour of princes.
ROBERT HALL : Reflections on War.
Whether I eat or drink, or in whatever other
action or employment I am engaged, that solemn
voice always seems to sound in my ears, " Arise,
ye dead, and come to judgment." As often as
I think of the day of judgment, my heart quakes,
and my whole frame trembles. If I am to in-
dulge in any of the pleasures of the present life,
I am resolved to do it in such a way that the
solemn realities of the future judgment may
never be banished from my recollection.
ST. JEROME.
Let him look into the future state of bliss or
misery, and see there God, the righteous judge,
ready to render every man according to his
deeds. 'LOCKE.
In that great day, wherein the secrets of all
hearts shall be laid open, no one shall be made
to answer for what he knows nothing of; but
shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing
or excusing him. LOCKE.
It cannot but be matter of very dreadful con-
sideration to any one, sober and in his wits, to
think seriously with himself, what horror and
confusion must needs surprise that man, at the
last day of account, who had led his whole life
by one rule, when God intends to judge him by
another. . SOUTH.
O the inexpressible horror that will seize upon
a sinner when he stands arraigned at the bar of
divine justice! when he shall see his accuser,
his judge, the witnesses, all his remorseless ad-
versaries ! SOUTH.
Could I give you a lively representation of
guilt and horror on this hand, and point out
162
DAY OF JUDGMENT. DEATH.
eternal wrath and decipher eternal vengeance on
the other, then might I show you the condition
of a sinner hearing himself denied by Christ.
SOUTH.
At doomsday, when the terrors are universal,
besides that it is in itself so much greater, be-
cause it can affright the whole world, it is also
made greater by communication and a sorrow-
ful influence; grief being then strongly infec-
tious when there is no variety of state, but an
entire kingdom of fear; and amazement is the
king of all our passions, and all the world its
subjects. And that shriek must needs be terri-
ble when millions of men and women, at the
same instant, shall fearfully cry out, and the
noise shall mingle with the trumpet of the arch-
angel, with the thunders of the dying and groan-
ing heavens, and the crack of the dissolving
world, when the whole fabric of nature shall
shake into dissolution and eternal ashes !
JEREMY TAYLOR.
How shall I be able to suffer that God should
redargue me at doomsday, and the angels re-
proach my lukewarmness?
JEREMY TAYLOR.
It must needs be a fearful exprobation of our
unworthiness when the Judge himself shall
bear witness against us. JEREMY TAYLOR.
The firm belief of a future judgment is the
most forcible motive to a good life, because
taken from this consideration of the most last-
ing happiness and misery. TILLOTSON.
God suffers the most grievous sins of particu-
lar persons to go unpunished in this world, be-
.ause his justice will have another opportunity
to meet and reckon with them.
TILLOTSON.
All the precepts, promises, and threatenings
of the gospel will rise up in judgment against
us; and the articles of our faith will be so many
articles of accusation : and the great weight of
our charge will be this, that we did not obey
the gospel, which we professed to believe; that
we made confession of the Christian faith, but
lived like heathens. TILLOTSON.
How couldst thou look for other but that God
should condemn thee for the doing of those
things for which thine own conscience did con-
demn thee all the while thou wast doing of
them ? TILLOTSON.
God will one time or another make a differ-
ence between the good and the evil. But there
is little or no difference made in this world;
therefore there must be another world wherein
this difference shall be made.
DR. I. WATTS : Logic.
DEATH.
When I look upon the tombs of the great,
every motion of e-ivy dies in me ; when I read
Iht epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate
desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of
parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with
compassion ; when I see the tomb of the parents
themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for
those whom we must quickly follow. When I
see kings lying by those who deposed them,
when I consider rival wits placed side by side,
or the holy men that divided the world with
their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow
and astonishment on the little competitions, fac-
tions, and debates of mankind. When I read
the several dates of the tombs, of some that died
yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I
consider that great day when we shall all of us
be contemporaries, and make our appearance
together. ADDISON :
Spectator, No. 26 ( Visit to Westminster Abbey).
The truth of it is, there is nothing in history
which is so improving to the reader as those ac-
counts which we meet with of the deaths of
eminent persons and of their behaviour in that
dreadful season. I may also add that there are
no parts in history which affect and please the
reader in so sensible a manner. The reason I
take to be this : there is no other single circum-
stance in the story of any person, which can
possibly be the case of every one who reads it.
A battle or a triumph are conjunctures in which
not one man in a million is likely to be engaged :
but when we soe a person at the point of death,
we cannot forbear being attentive to everything
he says or does, because we are sure that some
time'or other we shall ourselves be in the same
melancholy circumstances. The general, the
statesman, or the philosopher, are perhaps char-
acters which we may never act in, but the dying
man is one whom, sooner or later, we shall cer-
tainly resemble.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 289.
If the ingenious author above mentioned [St.
Evremond] was 59 pleased 'with gaiety of hu-
mour in a dying man, he might have found a
much nobler instance of it in our countryman
Sir Thomas More.
This great and learned man was famous for
enlivening his ordinary discourses with wit and
pleasantry ; and, as Erasmus tells him in arc
epistle dedicatory, acted in all parts of life like
a second Democritus.
He died upon a point of religion, and is re-
spected as a martyr by that side for which he
suffered. That innocent mirth, which had been
so conspicuous in his life, did not forsake him
to the last. He maintained the same cheerful-
ness of heart upon the scaffold which he used
to show at his table ; and upon laying his head
on the block, gave instances of that good hu-
mour with which he had always entertained his
friends in the most ordinary occurrences. His
death was of a piece with his life. There was
nothing in it new, forced, or affected. He did
not look upon the severing his head from his
body as a circumstance that ought to produce
any change in the disposition of his mind; and,
as he died under a fixed and settled hope of im-
mortality, he thought any unusual degree of sor
DEATH.
row and concern improper on such an occasion
as had nothing in it which could deject or
terrify him. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 349.
The prospect of death is so gloomy and dis-
mal that if it were constantly before our eyes
it would embitter all the sweets of life. The
gracious Author of our being hath therefore so
formed us that we are capable of many pleasing
sensations and reflections, and meet with so
many amusements and solicitudes, as divert our
thoughts from dwelling upon an evil which, by
reason of its seeming distance, makes but lan-
guid impressions upon the mind. But how dis-
tant soever the time of our death may be, since
it is certain that we must die, it is necessary to
allot some portion of our life to consider the
end of it ; and it is highly convenient to fix
some stated times to meditate upon the final
period of our existence here. The principle of
self-love, as we are men, will make us inquire
what is like to become of us after our dissolu-
tion ; and our conscience, as we are Christians,
will inform us that according to the good or
evil of our actions here, we shall be translated
to the mansions of eternal bliss or misery. When
this is seriously weighed, we must think it mad-
ness to be unprepared against the black moment ;
but when we reflect that perhaps that black mo-
ment may be to-night, how watchful ought we
to be ! ADDISON : Gziardian, No. 18.
A man has not time to subdue his passions,
establish his soul in virtue, and come up to the
perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off
the stage. ADDISON.
Men sometimes upon the hour of departure
do speak and reason above themselves ; for then
the soul, beginning to be freed from the liga-
ments of the body, reasons like herself, and dis-
courses in a strain above mortality.
ADDISON.
Dread of death hangs over the mere natural
man, and, like the handwriting on the wall,
damps all his jollity. ATTERBURY.
Men, upon the near approach of death, have
been roused up into such a lively sense of their
guilt, such a passionate degree of concern and
remorse, that if ten thousand ghosts had ap-
peared to them they scarce could have had a
fuller conviction of their danger.
ATTERBURY.
Those that place their hope in another world
have, in a great measure, conquered dread of
death, and unreasonable love of life.
ATTERBURY.
Men fear death as children fear to go into the
dark ; and as that natural fear in children is in-
creased with tales, so is the other. Certainly,
the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin,
and passage to another world, is holy and re-
ligious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto
nature, is weak.
LORD BACON: Essay 77, Of Death.
It is worthy the observing that there is no
passion in the mind of man so weak, but it
mates and masters the fear of death ; and there-
fore death is no such terrible enemy when a man
hath so many attendants about him that can win
the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over
death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it;
grief flieth to it ; fear pre-occupateth it ; nay, we
read, after Otho the emperor had slain himself,
pity (which is the tenderest of affections) pio-
voked many to die out of mere compassion to
their sovereign, and as the truest sort of. follow-
ers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and satiety.
LORD BACON : Essay 77, Of Death.
A man would die, though he were neither
valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to
do the same thing so oft over and over again.
LORD BACON: Essay 77., Of Death.
In expectation of a better, I can with patience
embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do
often desire death. I honour any man that con-
temns it, nor can I highly love any one that is
afraid of it. ... For a Pagan there may be
some motive to be in love with life ; but for a
Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how
he can escape this dilemma, that he is too sen-
sible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
The more we sink into the infirmities of age,
the nearer we are to immortal youth. All
people are young in the other world. That
state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flour-
ishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon
on the sudden; to be decrepit one minute and
all spirit and activity the next, must be a de-
sirable change. To call this dying is an abuse
of language. JEREMY COLLIER.
In death itself there can be nothing terrible,
for the act of death annihilates sensation ; but
there are many roads to death, and some of
them justly formidable, even to the bravest : but
so various are the modes of going out of the
world, that to be born may have been a more
painful thing than to die, and to live may prove
a more troublesome thing than either.
COLTON : Lacon.
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom
cannot release, the physician of him whom
medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him
whom time cannot console.
COLTON.
There is nothing, no, nothing, innocent or
good, that dies and is forgotten : let us hold to
that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child,
dying in its cradle will live again in the better
thoughts of those who loved it, a,nd play its
part, through them, in the redeeming actions of
the world', though its body be burnt to ashes, or
drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an
angel added to the host of heaven but does its
blessed work on earth in those that loved it
here. Forgotten ! oh, if the good deeds of
human creatures could be traced to their source,
how beautiful would even death appear ! fof
164
DEATH.
ho\v much charity, mercy, and purified affection
would he seen to have their growth in dusty
K rave^ ! DICKENS.
Oh, it is hard to take to heart the lesson that
such deaths will tejich; but let no man reject it,
for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty
universal truth. When death strikes down the
innocent and young, for every fragile form from
which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred
virtues rise, in shapes of Mercy, Charity, and
Love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every
tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green
graves, some good is born, some gentler nature
comes. In the destroyer's steps there spring up
bright creations that defy his power, and his
dark path becomes a way of light to heaven.
DICKENS.
Death comes equally to us all, and makes us
all equal when he comes. The ashes of an
oak in a chimney are no epitaph of that, to tell
me. how high, or how large, that was; it tells
me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood,
nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust
of great persons' graves is speechless too: it says
nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the
dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of
a prince whom thou couldst not, look upon,
will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it
thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the
dust of the church-yard into the church, and
the man sweeps out the dust of the church into
the church-yard, who will undertake to sift those
again, and to pronounce, "This is the patrician,
this is the noble flower, and this the yeoman,
this the plebeian bran" ? DONNE.
The thought of being nothing after death is
a burden insupportable to a virtuous man.
DRYDEN.
A wise man shall not be deprived of pleasure
even when death shall summons him; forasmuch
as he has attained the delightful end of the best
life, departing like a guest full and well satis-
fied : having received life upon trust, and duly
discharged that office, he acquits himself at de-
parting. EPICURUS.
Me that always waits upon God is ready
whensoever He calls. Neglect not to set your
accounts : he is a happy man who so lives as
thnt death at all times may find him at leisure
to die. FELLTHAM.
Of the great number to whom it has been my
painful professional duty to have administered
in the last hour of their lives, I have sometimes
felt surprised that so few have appeared reluc-
tant to go to " the undiscovered country, from
whose bourn noitraveller returns." Many, we
may easily suppose, have manifested this will-
ingness to die from an impatience of suffering,
or from that passive indifference which is some-
times the result of debility and bodily exhaus-
tion. But I have seen those who have arrived
at a fearless contemplation of the future, from
faith in the doctrine which our religion teaches.
Such men were not, only calm and supported,
but cheerful, in the hour of death; and I never
quitted such a sick-chamber without a hope that
my last end might be like theirs.
SIR HENRY HALFORD.
An event has taken place which has no par*
allel in the revolutions of time, the consequences
of which have not room to expand themselves
within a narrower sphere than an endless du-
ration. An event has occurred the issues of
which must forever baffle and elude all finite
comprehensions, by concealing themselves in
the depths of that abyss, of that eternity, which
is the dwelling-place of Deity, where there is
sufficient space for the destiny of each, among
the innumerable millions of the human race, to
develop itself, and without interference or con-
fusion to sustain and carry forward its separate
infinity of interest. That there is nothing hy-
perbolic or extravagant in these conceptions,
but that they are the true sayings of God, you
may learn from almost every page of the sacred
oracles. For what are they, in fact, but a dif-
ferent mode of announcing the doctrine taught
us in the following words : What shall it profit
a man, if he shall gain the whole world and
lose his own sou/ ; or what shall he give in ex^
change for his soul ? ROBERT HALL:
Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte.
She is gone ! No longer shrinking from the
winter wind, or lifting her calm pure forehead
to the summer's kiss; no longer gazing with her
blue and glorious eyes into a far-off sky ; no
longer yearning with a holy heart for heaven ;
no longer toiling painfully along the path, up-
ward and upward, to the everlasting rock on
which are based the walls of the city of the
Most High ; no longer here ; she is there ;
gazing, seeing, knowing, loving, as the blessed
only see, and know, and love. Earth has one
angel less, and heaven one more, since yester-
day. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has
received her welcome, and is resting on the
bosom of her Saviour. If human love have
power to penetrate the veil (and hath it not?)
then there are yet living here a few who have
the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves
them. N. HAWTHORNE.
It is not strange that that early love of the
heart should come back, as it so often does,
when the dim eye is brightening with its last
light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains
the heart has ever known in its wastes should
bubble up anew when the life-blood is growing
stagnant. It is not strange that a bright mem-
ory should come to a dying old man, as the
sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of
a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray
the very clouds that made the day dark should
grow gloriously beautiful.
N. HAWTHORNE.
When the veil of death has been drawn be-
tween us and the objects of our regard, how
quick-sighted do we become to their merits,
and how bitterly do we remember words, or
even looks, of unkinclness which may have
DEATH.
escaped in our intercourse with them ! How
careful should such thoughts render us in the
fulfilment of those offices of affection which
may yet be in our power to perform t for who
can tell how soon the moment may arrive when
repentance cannot be followed by reparation ?
BISHOP HKHKR.
That which causeth bitterness in death is the
languishing attendance and expectation of it
ere it come. HOOKER.
A virtuous mind should rather wish to depart
this world with a kind of treatable resolution
than to be suddenly cut off in a moment; rather
to be taken than snatched away from the face
of the earth. HOOKER.
Have wisdom to provide always beforehand,
that those evils overtake us not which death
unexpected doth use to bring upon careless
men ; and although it be sudden in itself, never-
theless, in regard of the prepared minds, it may
not be sudden. HooKER.
Let us beg of God that, when the hour of our
rest is come, the patterns of our dissolution may
be Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and David, who,
leisurably ending their lives in peace, prayed
for the mercies of God upon their posterity.
HOOKER.
It is an impressive task to follow the steps of
the chemist, and with fire, and capsule, and
balance in hand, as he tracks the march of the
conqueror, Death, through the domain of vital
structure.
The moralist warns us that life is but the
antechamber of death ; that as, on the first day
of life, the foot is planted on the lowest of a
range of steps, which man scales painfully, only
to arrive at the altar of corporeal death. The
chemist comes to proclaim that, from infancy
to old age, the quantity of earthy matter con-
tinually increases. Earth asserts her supremacy
more and more, and calls us more loudly to the
dust. In the end a Higher Will interposes, the
bond of union is unloosed, the immortal soul,
wings its flight upward to the Giver of all
Being. Earth claims its own, and a little heap
of ashes returns to the dust. It was a man. It
is now dust; our ashes are scattered abroad to
the winds over the surface of the earth. But
this dust is not inactive. It rises to walk the
earth again ; perhaps to aid in peopling the
globe with fresh forms of beauty, to assist in the
performance of the vital processes of the uni-
verse, to take a part in the world's life. In this
sense the words of Goethe are strictly applica-
bh, " Death is the parent of life."
Household Words.
It [the grave] buries every error covers
ever)' defect extinguishes every resentment.
From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond
regrets and tender recollections. Who can look
down upon the grave of an enemy and not feel
a compunctious throb that he should have
warred with the poor handful of dust that lies
mouldering before him ?
WASHINGTON IRVING.
It was, perhaps, ordained by Providence, to
hinder us from tyrannizing over one another,
that no individual should be of such importance
as to cause, by his retirement or death, any
chasm in the world. And Cowley had con-
versed to little purpose with mankind, if he had
never remarked how soon the useful friend, the
gay companion, and the favoured lover, when
once they are removed from before the sight,
give way to the succession of new objects.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 6.
Whoever would know how much piety and
virtue surpass all external goods might here
have seen them weighed against each other,
where all that gives motion to the active, and
elevation to the eminent, all that sparkles in the
eye of hope, and pants in the bosom of suspi-
cion, at once became dust in the balance, with-
out Weight and without regard. Riches, au-
thority, and praise lose all their influence when
they are considered as riches which to-morrow
shall be bestowed upon another, authority which
shall this night expire forever, and praise which,
however merited, or however sincere, shall,
after a few moments, be heard no more.
In those hours of seriousness and wisdom,
nothing appeared to raise his spirits, or gladden
his heart, but the recollection of acts of good-
ness; nor to excite his attention, but some
opportunity for the exercise of the duties of
religion.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 54.
When a friend is carried to his grave, we at
once find excuses for every weakness, and pal-
liations of every fault ; we recollect a thousand
endearments which before glided off our minds
without impression, a thousand favours unre-
paid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish,
vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we
may receive as that we may bestow happiness,
and recom'pense that kindness which before we
never understood.
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well in-
structed, a more painful occurrence than the
death of one whom we have injured without
reparation. Our crime seems now irretrievable;
it is indelibly recorded, and the stamp of fate is
fixed upon it. We consider, with the most
afflictive anguish, the pain which we have given
and now cannot alleviate, and the losses which
we have caused and now cannot repair.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 54.
When we see our enemies and friends gliding
away before us, let us not forget that we are
subject to the general law of mortality, and
shall soon be where our doom will be fixed for-
ever. DR. S. JOHNSON.
Death may be said with almost equal pro-
priety to confer as well as to level all distinc-
tions. In consequence of that event, a kind
of chemical operation takes place ; for those
characters which were mixed with the gross
particles of vice, by being thrown into the
alembic of flattery, are sublimated into the
essence of virtue. He who during the per-
1 66
DEATH.
formance of his part upon the stage of the world
was little if at all applauded, after the close of
the drama, is pourtrayed as the favourite of
"every virtue under heaven."
HENRY KETT: Olla Podrida, No. 39.
Feasts, and business, and pleasures, and en-
joyments, seem great things to us, whilst we
think of nothing else; but as soon as we add
death to them they all sink into an equal little-
ness. LAW.
The eyes of our souls only then begin to see
when our bodily eyes are closing. LAW.
What a strange thing is it, that a little health,
or the poor business of a shop, should keep us
so senseless of these great things that are coming
so fast upon us ! LAW.
Think upon the vanity and shortness of hu-
man life, and let death and eternity be often in
your minds. LAW.
I know not why we should delay our tokens
of respect to those who deserve them until the
lieart that our sympathy could have gladdened
has ceased to beau As men cannot read the
epitaphs inscribed upon the marble that covers
them, so the tombs that we erect to virtue often
only prove our repentance that we neglected it
when with us.
LORD E. G. E. L. B. LYTTON.
Men in general do not live as they looked to
<iie ; and therefore do not die as they looked to
live. M ANTON.
O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom
none could advise, thou hast persuaded ; what
none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all
the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out
of the world and despised : thou hast drawn to-
gether all the far-fetched greatness, all- the pride,
cruelty, and ambition of men, and covered all
over with these two narrow words, Hie Jacet I
SIR W. RALEIGH :
Hist, of the World, Finis.
The heart is the first part that quickens, and
the last that dies. RAY.
. The darkness of death is like the evening
twilight : it makes all objects appear more lovely
to the dying. RICHTER.
Nothing so soon reconciles us to the thought
af our own death, as the prospect of one friend
after another dropping around us. SENECA.
The body being only the covering of the soul,
it its dissolution we shall discover the secrets of
nature the darkness shall be dispelled, and our
souls irradiated with light and glory ; a glory
without a shadow, a glory that shall surround
us; and from whence we shall look down, and
see day and night beneath us : and as now we
cannot lift up our eyes towards the sun without
dazzling, what shall we do when we behold the
divine light in its il'ustrious original?
SENECA.
What is death but a ceasing to be what we
were before ? we are kindled and put out, we
die, daily : nature that begot us expels us, and
a better and a safer place is provided for us.
SENECA.
Loss of sight is the misery of life, and usually
the forerunner of death : when the malefactor
comes once to be muffled, and the fatal cloth
drawn over his eyes, we know that he is not far
from his execution. SOUTH.
There are such things as a man shall remem-
ber with joy upon his death-bed ; such as shall
cheer and warm his heart even in that last and
bitter agony. SOUTH.
From what I have observed, and what I have
heard those persons say whose professions lead
them to the dying, I am induced to infer that
the fear of death is not common, and that where
it exists it proceeds rather from a diseased and
enfeebled mind than from any principle in our
nature. Certain it is that among the poor the
approach of dissolution is usually regarded with
a quiet and natural composure which it is con-
solatory to contemplate, and which is as far re-
moved from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is
from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs
is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing
to lay down the burden of a weary life, " in the
sure and certain hope" of a blessed immor-
tality. SOUTHEY.
This is the first heavy loss which you have
ever experienced ; hereafter the bitterness of the
cup will have passed away, and you will then
perceive its wholesomeness. This world is all to
us till we suffer some such loss, and every such
loss is a transfer of so much of our hearts and
hopes to the next ; and they who live long
enough to see most of their friends go before
them feel that they have more to recover by death
than to lose by it. This is not the mere spec-
ulation of a mind at ease. Almost all who were
about me in my childhood have been removed.
I have brothers, sisters, friends, father, mother,
and child, in another state of existence ; and
assuredly I regard death with very different feel-
ings from what I should have done if none of
my affections were fixed beyond the grave. To
dwell upon the circumstances which, in this
case, lessen the evil of separation would be
idle; at present you acknowledge, and in time
you will feel them. SOUTHEY.
There is a sort of delight, which is alternately
mixed with terror and sorrow, in the contem-
plation of death. The soul has its curiosity
more than ordinarily awakened when it turns
its thoughts upon the conduct of such who have
behaved themselves with an equal, a resigned,
a cheerful, a generous or heroic temper in that
extremity. We are affected with these respect-
ive manners of behaviour, as we secretly believe
the part of the dying person imitated by our-
selves, or such as we imagine ourselves moie
particularly capable of. Men of exalted minds
march before us like princes, and are to the
DEA TH. DECEPTION.
167
ordinary race of mankind rather subjects of their
admiration than example. However, there are
no ideas strike more forcibly upon our imagina-
tions tlian those which are raised from reflections
upon the exits of great and excellent men.
SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 133.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so
necessary, and so universal as death should ever
have been designed by Providence as an evil to
mankind. SWIFT.
Take away but the pomps of death, the dis-
guises and solemn bugbears, and the actings
by candlelight, and proper and fantastic cere-
monies, the minstrels and the noise-makers, the
women and the weepers, the swoonings and the
shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the
dark room and the ministers, the kindred and
the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and
quilted from its troublesome circumstances. It
is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd
suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day;
and at the same time in which you die, in that
very night a thousand creatures die with you,
some wise men and many fools; and the wis-
dom of the first will not quit him, and the folly
of the latter does not make him unable to die.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
For the death of the righteous is like the de-
scending of ripe and wholesome fruits from a
pleasant and florid tree. Our senses entire, our
limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures ; after
provision made for our children, with a blessing
entailed upon posterity, in the presence of our
friends, our dearest relatives closing our eyes and
binding our feet, leaving a good name behind
us. JEREMY TAYLOR.
Nature gives us many children and friends, to
take them away ; but takes none away to give
them us again. SIR W. TEMPLE.
Though we live never so long, we are still
surprised ; we put the evil day far from us, and
then it catches us unawares, and we tremble at
the prospect. WAKE.
Let us live like those who expect to die, and
then we shall find that we feared death only be-
cause we were unacquainted with it.
WAKE.
ITiere is nothing in the world more generally
dreaded, and yet less to be feared, than death :
indeed, for those unhappy men whose hopes ter-
minate in this life, no wonder if the prospect of
another seems terrible and amazing. WAKE.
Death seti us safely on shore in our long-ex-
pected Canaan, where there are no temptations,
no danger of falling, but eternal purity and im-
mortal joys secure our innocence and happiness
forever. WAKE.
How glorious and how dreadful is the differ-
ence between the death of a saint and that of
a sinner, a soul that is in Christ and a soul that
has no interest in him! The death of every
sinner has all that real evil and terror in it which
it appears to an eye of sense ; but a convinced
sinner beholds it yet a thousand times more
dreadful. When conscience is awakened upon
the borders of the grave, it beholds death in its
utmost horror, as the curse of the broken law,
as the accomplishment of the threatenings of an
angry God. A guilty conscience looks on deatlv
with all its formidable attendants round it, and
espies an endless train of sorrows coming after
it. Such a wretch beholds death riding towardi
him on a pale horse, and hell following at hi
heels, without all relief or remedy, without a
Saviour, and without hope.
DR. I. WATTS :
Death a Blessing to the Saints.
A soul inspired with the warmest aspirations
after celestial beatitudes keeps its powers atten-
tive. DR. I. WATTS.
It is when considered as the passage to an-
other world that the contemplation of death
becomes holy and religious ; that is, calculated
to promote a state of preparedness for our setting
out on this great voyage, our departure from
this world to enter the other. It is manifest
that those who are engrossed with the things
that pertain to this life alone, who are devoted
to worldly pleasure, to worldly gain, honour, or
power, are certainly not preparing themselves
for the passage into another; while it is equally
manifest that the change of heart, of desires,
wishes, tastes, thoughts, dispositions, which con-
stitutes a meetness for entrance into a happy,
holy, heavenly state, the hope of which can
indeed " mate and master the fear of death,"
must take place here on earth ; for, if not, it
will not take place after death.
WHATELY :
Annot. on Bacorts Essay, Of Death*
DECEPTION.
Dissimulation was his masterprece ; in which
he so much excelled that men were not ashamed
of being deceived but twice by him.
EARL OF CLARENDON.
Another account of the shortness of our rea-
son, and easiness of deception, is the forward-
ness of our understanding's assent to slightly
examined conclusions. GLANVILL.
It many times falls out that we deem ourselves
much deceived in others, because we first de-
ceived ourselves. SIR P. SIDNEY.
All deception in the course of life is, indeed,
nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and
falsehood passing from words to things.
SOUTH.
Whosoever deceives a man makes him ruin
himself; and by causing an error in the great
guide of his actions, his judgment, he causes an
error in his choice, the misguidance of which
must naturally engage him to his destruction.
SOUTH
iCS
DE CEPTION. DEMO CRA CY.
All deception is a misapplying of those signs
which, by compact or institution, wore made the
means of men's signifying or conveying their
thoughts. SOUTH.
Let those consider this who look upon it as a
piece of art, and the masterpiece of conversation,
to deceive and make a prey of a credulous and
well-meaning honesty. SOUTH.
There can be no greater labour than to be
always dissembling; there being so many ways
by which a smothered truth is apt to blaze and
break out. SOUTH.
There is no quality so contrary to any nature
which one cannot affect, and put on upon occa-
sion, in order to serve an interest. SWIFT.
Let the measure of your affirmation or denial
be the understanding of your contractor; for he
that deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking
what is true in a sense not understood by the
other, is a thief.
JEREMY TAYLOR : Rule of Holy Living.
Indirect dealing will be discovered one time
or other, and then he loses his reputation.
TILLOTSON.
Even the world, that despises simplicity, does
not profess to approve of duplicity, or double-
foldedness. R. C. TRENCH.
DEMOCRACY.
To govern according to the sense and agree-
ably to the interests of the people is a great
and glorious object of government. This object
cannot be obtained but through the medium of
popular election ; and popular election is a
mighty evil. It is such and so great an evil
that, though there are few nations whose mon-
archs were not originally elective, very few are
now elected. They are the distempers of elec-
tions that have destroyed all free states. To
cure these distempers is difficult, if not impos-
sible ; the only thing, therefore, left to save the
commonwealth is, to prevent their return too
quickly. BURKE :
Speech on the Duration of Parliaments,
May 8, 1780.
So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of
continual elections, though those of Rome were
sober disorders. They had nothing but faction,
bribery, bread, and stage-plays, to debauch
them : we have the inflammation of liquor
superadded, a fury hotter than any of them.
BURKE :
Speech on the Duration of Parliaments.
May 8, 1780.
No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode
of election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, <. in be generally good in a government
conversant in extensive objects; because they
have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select
the man with ? view to the duty, or to accom
modate the one to the other. I do not hesiU te
to say that the road to eminence and power,
from obscure condition, ought not to be made
too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If
rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it
ought to pass through some sort of probation.
The temple of honour ought to be seated on an
eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let
it be remembered, too, that virtue is nevei tiied
but by some difficulty and some struggle.
BURKE :
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1 790.
By these theorists the right of the people ir
almost always sophistically confounded with
their power. The body of the community,
whenever it can come to act, can meet with no
effectual resistance; but till power and right are
the same, the whole body of them has no right
inconsistent with virtue, and the first of all
virtues, prudence. BURKE :
Refections on the Revolution in France, 1790.
Until now, we have seen no examples of con-
siderable democracies. The ancients were better
acquainted with them. Not being wholly un-
read in the authors who had seen the most of
those constitutions, and who best understood
them, I cannot help concurring with their opin-
ion, that an absolute democracy no more than
absolute monarchy is to be reckoned among the
legitimate forms of government. They think
it rather the corruption and degeneracy than
the sound constitution of a republic. If I
recollect rightly, Aristotle observes that a de-
mocracy has many striking points of resem-
blance with a tyranny.
(The ethical character is the same: both ex-
ercise despotism over the better class of citizens;
and decrees are in the one what ordinances
and arrets are in the other: the demagogue,
too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently
the same identical men, and always bear a close
analogy ; and these have the principal power,
each in their respective forms of government,
favourites with the absolute monarch, and dema
gogues with a people such as I have described.
Arist., Polit., lib. -iv. cap. .4.)
Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the
majority of the citizens is capable of exercising
the most cruel oppressions upon the minority,
whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind
of polity, as they often must, and that oppres-
sion of the minority will extend to far greater
numbers, and will be carried on with muck
greater fury, than can almost ever be appro
hended from the dominion of a single sceptre.
In such a popular persecution, individual suf-
ferers are in a much more deplorable condition
than any other. Under a cruel prince they
have, the plaudits of the people to animate theii
generous constancy under their sufferings; but
those who are subjected to wrong under multi-
tudes are deprived of all external consolation:
they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered
by a conspiracy of their whole species.
BURKE?
Reflections on the Revolution in Frame, 1790,
DEMOCRA CY. DESPAIR. DESPOTISM.
169
Jut admifing democracy not to have that in-
ible tendency to party tyranny which I sup-
it to ha.ve, and admitting it to possess as
much good in it when unmixed as I am sure it
possesses when compounded with other forms ;
does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at
all to recommend it ? I do not often quote Bo-
lingbroke, nor have his works in general left
any permanent impression on my mind. He is
a presumptuous and a superficial writer. But he
has one observation which in my opinion is not
without depth and solidity. He says that he
prefers a monarchy to other governments, be-
cause you can better ingraft any description of
republic on a monarchy than anything of mon-
archy upon the republican forms. I think him
perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically,
and it agrees well with the speculation.
BURKE: Reflec. on the Rev. in France.
As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot,
under popular sway, be effectually restrained,
the other great object of political arrangement,
the means of abating an excessive desire of it,
is in such a state still worse provided for. The
democratic commonwealth is the foodful nurse
of ambition. Under the other forms it meets
with many restraints. BURKE:
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 1791.
If it be admitted that on the institution of
property the well-being of society depends, it
follows surely that it would be madness to give
supreme power in the state to a class which
would not be likely to respect that institution.
And if this be conceded, it seems to me to follow
that it would be madness to grant the prayer of
this petition. I entertain no hope that if we
place the government of the kingdom in the
hands of the majority of the males of one-and-
twenty told by the head, the institution oT prop-
erty will be respected. If I am asked why I
entertain no such hope, I answer, Because the
hundreds of thousands of males of twenty-one
who have signed this petition tell me to enter-
tain no such hope ; because they tell me that if
I trust them with power the first use which they
make of it will be to plunder every man in the
kingdom who has a good coat on his back and
a good roof over his head.
LORD MACAULAY:
Speech on The People's Charter, May 3, 1842.
DESPAIR.
A speculative despair is unpardonable, where
it is our duty to act. BURKE:
To the Duke of Richmond, Sept. 26, 1775.
There are situations in which despair does
not imply inactivity. BURKE :
To Sir P. Francis, Dec. 1 1, 1789.
Despair is like froward children, who, when
you take away one of their playthings, throw
the rest into the fire for madness. It grows
angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and
revenges its misfortunes on its own head. Ir
refuses to live under disappointments and
crosses, and chooses rather not to be at all,
than to be without the thing which it hath once
imagined necessary to its happiness.
CHARRON.
Despair makes a despicable figure, and is
descended from a mean original. It is the
offspring of fear, laziness, and impatience. It
argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and
oftentimes of honesty too. After all, the exer-
cise of this passion is so troublesome, that
nothing but dint of evidence and demonstra-
tion should force it upon us. I would not de-
spair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was
passed, I saw my misfortune recorded in the
book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.
JEREMY COLLIER.
He that despairs, degrades the Deity, and
seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not
just to His word; and in vain hath read the
Scriptures, the world, and man.
FELLTHAM.
One sign of despair is the peremptory con-
tempt of the condition which is the ground of
hope ; the going on not only in terrors and
amazement of conscience, but also boldly, hop-
ingly, and confidently, in wilful habits of sin.
HAMMOND.
Despair is the thought of the unattainableness
of any good, which works differently in men's
minds ; sometimes producing uneasiness or pain,
sometimes rest and indolency. LOCKE.
No man's credit can fall so low but that, if he
bear his shame as he should do, and profit by
it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to
redeem his reputation. Therefore let no man
despair that desires and endeavours to recover
himself again. LORD NOTTINGHAM :
Trial of the Earl of Pembroke.
He thai; despairs measures Providence by his
own little contracted model. SOUTH.
As the hope of salvation is a good disposition
towards it, so is despair a certain consignment
to eternal ruin. JEREMY TAYLOR.
It is impossible for that man to despair who
remembers that his helper is omnipotent.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
DESPOTISM.
But in all despotic governments, though a par-
ticular prince may favour arts and letters, there
is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you may
observe from Augustus's reign, how the Romans
lost themselves by degrees until they fell to an
equality with the most barbarous nations that
surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its
free states, and you would think its inhabitants
lived in different climates and under different
heavens from those at present, so different aie
170
DESPOTISM.
the geniuses which are formed under Turkish
slavery, and Grecian liberty.
Besides poverty and want, there are other
reasons that debase the minds of men who live
under slavery, though I look on this as the prin-
cipal. This natural tendency of despotic power
to ignorance and barbarity, though not insisted
upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable ar-
gument against that form of government, as it
shows how repugnant it is to the good of man-
kind, and the perfection of human nature,
which ought to be the great ends of all civil
institutions. ADDISON : Spectator, No. 287.
An honest private man often grows cruel and
abandoned when converted into an absolute
prince. Give a man power of doing what he
pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear,
and consequently overturn in him one of the
great pillars of morality. This too we find con-
firmed by matter of fact. How many hopeful
heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in the
possession of them have become such monsters
of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human
nature ! ADDISON : Spectator, No. 287.
The simplest form of government is despotism,
where all the inferior orbs of power are moved
merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
are subjected to them directed in the same
manner, merely by the occasional will of the
magistrate. This form, as it is the most simple,
so it is infinitely the most general. Scarcely any
part of the world is exempted from its power.
And in those few places where men enjoy what
they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering
situation, and makes greater and greater strides
to that gulf of despotism which at last swallows
up cveiy species of government. BURKE :
V indie, of Nat. Society, 1756.
Many of the greatest tyrants on the records
of history have begun their reigns in the fairest
manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power
corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a
king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous
flatterers, who find their account in keeping him
from the least light of reason, till all ideas of
rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his
mind. BURKE :
Vindic. of Nat. Society.
In this kind of government human nature is
not only abused and insulted, but it is actually
degraded and sunk into a species of brutality.
The consideration of this made Mr. Locke say,
with great justice, that a government of this
kind was worse than anarchy : indeed, it is so
abhorred and detested by all who live under
forms that have a milder appearance, that there
13 scarcely a rational man in Europe that would
not prefer death to Asiatic despotism.
BURKE : Vindic. of Nat. Society.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual,
relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar arc! prosti-
tuted use, the spring of that spirit which is to be
exerted on great occasions. It was in the most
patient period of Roman servitude that themes
of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of
boys at school, cum perimit stevos classis ntt-
merosa tyrannos. BURKE:
Rcjlec. on the Rev. in France, 1790.
That writer is too well read in men not to
know how often the desire and design of a
tyrannic domination lurks in the claim of an
extravagant liberty. Perhaps in the beginning
it always displays itself in that manner. No
man has ever affected power which he did not
hope from the favour of the existing government
in any other mode. BURKE:
Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs, 1791.
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until
the liberty of the press be destroyed than the
night can happen before the sun is set.
COLTON: Lacon.
Despotism is the only form of government
which may with safety to itself neglect the edu-
cation of its infant poor.
BISHOP HORSLEY.
The ordinary sophism by which misrule is
defended is, when truly stated, this : The peo-
ple must continue in slavery because slavery has
generated in them all the vices of slaves. Be-
cause they are ignorant, they must remain under
a power which has made and which keeps them
ignorant. Because they have been made fero-
cious by misgovernment, they must be mis-
governed forever. If the system under which
they live were so mild and liberal that under its
operation they had become humane and en-
lightened, it would be safe to venture on a
change. But as this system has destroyed mo-
rality, and prevented the development of the
intellect, as it has turned men, who might
under different training have formed a virtuous
and happy community, into savage and stupid
wild beasts, therefore it ought to last forever.
LORD MACAULAY: Mirabeau, July, 1832.
Arbitrary power is but the first natural step
from anarchy, or the savage life. SWIFT.
Whoever argues in defence of absolute power
in a single person, though he offers the old
plausible plea that it is his opinion, which he
cannot help unless he be convinced, ought to
be treated as the common enemy of mankind.
SWIFT.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on
the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
WASHINGTON.
There is something among men more capable
of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirl-
wind, or earthquake; that is, the threa \ened in-
dignation of the whole civilized world
DANIEL WEBSTER.
Whenever men have become heartily wearied
of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been
proportionally great to embrace the opposite
extreme of rigorous despotism. WHATELY.
DEVOTION.
171
DEVOTION.
There is another kind of virtue that may find
employment for those retired hours in which we
are altogether left to ourselves and destitute of
company and conversation; I mean that inter-
course and communication which every reason-
able creature ought to maintain with the great
Author of his being. The man who lives under
an habitual sense of the divine presence keeps
up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and
enjoys every moment the satisfaction of thinking
himself in company with his dearest and best
of friends. The time never lies heavy upon
him : it is impossible for him to be alone. His
thoughts and passions are the most busied at
such hours when those of other men are the
most inactive. He no sooner steps out of the
world but his heart burns with devotion, swells
with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness
of that presence which everywhere surrounds
him ; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears,
its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Sup-
porter of its existence.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 93.
It has been observed by some writers, that
man is more distinguished from the animal
world by devotion than by reason, as several
brute creatures discover in their actions some-
thing like a faint glimmering of reason, though
they betray in no single circumstance of iheir
behaviour anything that bears the least affinity
to devotion. It is certain, the propensity of
the mind to religious worship, the natural tend-
ency of the soul to fly to some superior being
for succour in dangers and distresses, the grati-
tude to an invisible superintendent which arises
in us upon receiving any extraordinary and un-
expected good fortune, the acts of love and
admiration with which the thoughts of men are
so wonderfully transported in meditating upon
the divine perfections, and the universal con-
currence of all the nations under heaven in the
great article of adoration, plainly show that
devotion or religious worship must be the effect
of tradition from some first founder of mankind,
or that it is conformable to the natural light of
reason, or that it proceeds from an instinct im-
planted in the soul itself. For my own part, I
look upon all these to be the concurrent causes;
but whichever of them shall be assigned as the
principle of divine worship, it manifestly points
to a Supreme Being as the first author of it.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 201.
The devout man Joes not only believe, but
feels, there is a Deity. He has actual sensations
of him; his experience concurs with his reason;
he sees him more and more in all his intercourses
with him, and even in this life almost loses his
faith in conviction.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 465.
A man must be of a very cold or degenerate
temper whose heart doth not burn within him
in the midst of praise and adoration.
ADDISON : Freeholder.
Devoti/m inspires men with sentiments of
religious gratitude, and swells their hearts with
inward transports of joy and exultation.
ADDISON.
A discreet use of becoming ceremonies . . .
inspirits the sluggish and inflames even the
devout worshipper. ATTXRBURY.
Our hearts will be so resty or listless that
hardly we shall be induced to perform it [devo-
tion] when it is most necessary or useful for ua.
BARROW.
An eminent degree and vigour of the religious
affections, then, ought not to be denominated
fanaticism, unless they arise from wrong views
of religion, or are so much indulged as to dis-
qualify for the duties of society. Within these
limits, the more elevated devotional sentiments
are, the more perfect is the character, and the
more suited to the destination of a being who
has, indeed, an important part to act here, but
who stands on the confines of eternity.
ROBERT HALL:
Fragment, On the Might of Worship.
Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in
opposition to many authorities, that poetical
devotion cannot often please. The doctrines
of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic
poem ; and he who has the happy power of
arguing in verse will not lose it because his sub-
ject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty
and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the
spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissi-
tudes of the tide and the revolutions of the
sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines
which no reader shall lay aside. The subject
of the disputation is not piety, but the motives
to piety ; that of the description is not God, but
the works of God.
Contemplative piety, or the intercourse be-
tween God and the human soul, cannot be
poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy
of his Creator and plead the merits of his Re-
deemer, is already in a higher state than poetry
can confer.
The essence of poetry is invention ; such
invention as, by producing something unex-
pected, surprises and delights. The topics of
devotion are few, and being few are universally
known ; but, few as they are, they can be made
no more ; they can receive no grace from
novelty of sentiment, and very little from
novelty of expression.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Life of Waller.
.There is something so natively great and good
in a person that is truly devout, that an awkward
man may as well pretend to be genteel, as a
hypocrite to be pious. The constraint in woids
and actions are equally visible in both cases ;
and anything set up in their room does tut
remove the endeavours farther off' from their
pretensions. But, however the sense of true
piety is abated, there is no other motive of
action that can carry us through all the vicissi-
tudes of life with alacrity and resolution.
SIR R. STEELE: Toiler, No. 211.
172
DISCIPLINE. DISCONTENT.
In retirement make frequent colloquies or
short discoursings between God and thy own
soul. JEREMY TAYLOR.
DISCIPLINE.
The rule of imitating God can never be suc-
cessfully proposed but upon Christian principles,
such as that this world is a place not of rest,
but of discipline. ATTERBURY.
It is not advisable to reward where men have
the tenderness not to punish.
L' ESTRANGE.
If a strict hand be kept over children from
the beginning, they will in that age be tractable ;
and if as they grow up the rigour be, as they
deserve it, gently relaxed, former restraints will
increase their love. LOCKE.
The backwardness parents show in indulging
their faults will make them set a greater value
on their credit themselves, and teach them to
be the more careful to preserve the good opinion
of others. LOCKE.
The rebukes which their faults will make
hardly to be avoided should not only be in
sober, grave, and impassionate words, but also
alone and in private. LOCKE.
If words are sometimes to be used, they ought
to be grave, kind, and sober, representing the
ill or unbecomingness of the fault.
LOCKE.
If punishment reaches not the mind and
makes the will supple, it hardens the offender.
LOCKE.
DISCONTENT.
The happiest of mankind, overlooking those
solid blessings which they already have, set
iheir hearts upon somewhat which they want;
some untried pleasure, which if they could but
taste, they should then be completely blest.
ATTERBURY.
The great error of our nature is, not to know
where to stop, not to be satisfied with any rea-
sonable acquirement ; not to compound with
our condition ; but to lose all we have gained
by an insatiable pursuit after more.
BURKE :
Vindication of Nat. Society, 1756.
Men complain of not finding a place of re-
pose. They are in the wrong : they have it for
seeking. What they should indeed complain
of is, that the heart is an enemy to that very
repose they seek. To themselves alone should
they impute their discontent. They seek within
the short span of life to satisfy a thousand de-
sires, each of which alone is insatiable. One
month passes, and another comes on; the year
ends and then begins ; but man is still unchanged
in folly, still blindly continuing in prejudice.
GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter XCVI.
Man doth not seem to rest satisfied either
with fruition of that wherewith his life is pre
served, or with performance of such actions as
advance him most deservedly in estimation.
HOOKER.
It has been remarked, perhaps, by every
writer who has left behind him observations
upon life, that no man is pleased with his pres-
ent state, which proves equally unsatisfactory,
says Horace, whether fallen upon by chance, 01
chosen with deliberation; we are always dis-
gusted with some circumstance or other of our
situation, and imagine the condition of others
more abundant in blessings, or less exposed to
calamities. Thib universal discontent has been
generally mentioned with great severity of cen-
sure, as unreasonable in itself, since of two,
equally envious of each other, both cannot have
the larger share of happiness, and as tending to
darken life with unnecessary gloom, by with-
drawing our minds from the contemplation and
enjoyment of that happiness which our state
affords us, and fixing our attention upon foreign
objects, which we only behold to depress our-
selves, and increase our misery by injurious
comparisons.
DR. S. JOHNSON : Rambler, No. 63.
He that changes his condition out of impa-
tience and dissatisfaction, when he has tried a
new one wishes for his old again.
L' ESTRANGE.
Levity pushes on from one vain desire to an-
other iu a regular vicissitude and succession of
cravings and satiety. L' ESTRANGE.
We are seldom at ease, and free enough from
the solicitation of our natural or adopted de-
sires; but a constant succession of uneasinesses
(out of that stock which natural wants o*
acquired habits have heaped up) take the will
in their turns. LOCKE.
There are several persons who have many
pleasures and entertainments in their possession
which they do not enjoy. It is therefore a kind
and good office to acquaint them with their own
happiness, and turn their attention to such in-
stances of their good fortune as they are apf; tu
overlook. Persons in the married state often
want such a monitor; and pine away their days,
by looking on the same condition in anguish
and murmur, which carries with it in the opin-
ion of others a complication of all the pleasures
of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes.
SIR R. STEELE: 7atter, No. 95.
When we desire anything, oui minds run
wholly on the good circumstances of it; when
'tis obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad
ones. SWIFT.
DISCRE 'CION. DOGMA TISM. DRAMA.
173
To reprove discontent, the ancients feigned
that in hell stood a man twisting a rope of hay;
and still he twisted on, suffering an ass to eat
U] all that was finished.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
DISCRETION.
If we look into communities and divisions of
men, we observe that the discreet man, not the
witty, nor the learned, nor the brave, guides the
conversation, and gives measures to society.
ADDISON.
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a
guide to win all the duties of life.
ADDISON.
I do not contend against the advantages of
distrust. In the world we live in it is but too
necessary. Some of old called it the very
sinews of discretion. But what signify common-
places that always run parallel and equal ? Dis-
trust is good, or it is bad, according to our
position and our purpose. Distrust is a defen-
sive principle. They who have much to lose
have much to fear. BURKE :
On the Policy of the Allies.
The greatest parts, without discretion, may
be fatal to their owner. HUME.
There is no talent so useful towards rising in
the world, or which puts men more out of the
reach of fortune, than discretion, a species of
lower prudence. SWIFT.
DOGMATISM.
I could never divide myself from any man
upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry
with his judgment for not agreeing with me in
that from which within a few days I should dis-
sent myself. . . . Where we desire to be in-
formed, 'tis good to contest with men above
ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opin-
ions 'tis best to argue with judgments below
our own, that the frequent spoils and victories
over their reasons may settle in ourselves an
esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.
SIR T. BROWNE : Religio Medici, VI.
He who is certain, or presumes to say he
know-), is, whether he be mistaken or in the
right, a dogmatist. FLEMING.
The dogmatist's opinioned assurance is para-
mount to argument. GLANVILL.
The very dogmatizer that teacheth for doc-
trines or commandments of God his own dic-
tates. HAMMOND.
The fault lieth altogether in the dogmatics,
that is to say, those that are imperfectly learned,
and with passion press to have their opinion
pass everywhere for truth. T. HO15BES.
They utter all they think with a violence
and indisposition, unexamined, without relation
to person, place, or fitness. BEN JONSON.
Men would often see what a small pittance
of reason is mixed with those huffing opinions
they are swelled with, with which they are so
armed at all points, and with which they so
confidently, lay about them. LOCKE.
A man brings his mind to be positive and
fierce for positions whose evidence he has never
examined. LOCKE.
It is a wrong use of my understanding to
make it the rule and measure of another man's;
a use which it is neither fit for, nor capable of.
LOCKE.
The assuming an authority to dictate to others,
and a forwardness to prescribe to their opinions,
is a constant concomitant of this bias of our
judgments. LOCKE.
The dogmatist is sure of everything, and the
sceptic believes nothing. DR. I. WATTS.
A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be cen-
sorious of his neighbours. Every one of his
opinions appears to him written, as it were, with
sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neigh-
bours do not see it in the same light. He is
tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of
low and dark understandings, because they do
not believe what he does. DR. I. WATTS.
A dogmatic in religion is not a great way off
from a bigot, and is in high danger of growing
up to be a bloody persecutor.
DR. I. WATTS.
DRAMA.
The first original of the drama was a religious
worship, consisting only of a chorus, which was
nothing else but a hymn to a deity. As luxury and
voluptuousness prevailed over innocence and
religion, this form of- worship degeneuated into
tragedies; in which, however, the chorus so far
remembered its first office as to brand every-
thing that was vicious, and recommend every-
thing that was laudable, to intercede with Heaven
for the innocent, and to implore its vengeance
on the criminal.
Homer and Hesiod intimate to us how this
art should be applied when they represent the
Muses as surrounding Jupiter and warbling
their hymns about his throne.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 405.
Were our English stage but half so virtuous
as that of the Greeks or Romans, we should
quickly see the influence of it in the behaviour
of all the politer part of mankind. It would
not be fashionable to ridicule religion, or its
professors ; the man of pleasure would not be
the complete gentleman ; vanity would be out
of countenance ; and every quality which is or-
namental to human nature would meet with thai
esteem which is due to it. If the English stage
174
DRAMA.
were under the same regulations the Athenian
was formerly, it would have the same effect that
had, in recommending the religion, the govern-
ment, and public worship of its country.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 446.
The stage might be made a perpetual source
of the most noble and useful entertainment, were
it under proper regulations. ADDISON.
The work may be well performed, but will
never take if it is not set off with proper scenes.
ADDISON.
The poetry of operas is generally as exqui-
sitely ill as the music is good. ADDISON.
Murders and executions are always transacted
behind the scenes in the French theatre.
ADDISON.
Dramatical or representative poesy is, as it
were, a visible history; for it sets out the image
of things as if they were present, and history as
if they were past. LORD BACON.
Inductions are out of date, and a prologue in
Teiae is as stale as a black velvet cloak.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
All the plays of ^Eschylus and the Henry VI.
of Shakespeare are examples of a trilogy.
BRANDE.
It is natural with men, when they relate any
action with any degree of warmth, to represent
the parties to it talking as the occasion requires ;
and this produces that mixed species of poetry,
composed of narrative and dialogue, which is
very universal in all languages, and of which
Homer is the noblest example in any. This
mixed kind of poetry seems also to be most per-
fect, as it takes in a variety of situations, circum-
stances, reflections, and descriptions, which must
be rejected on a more limited plan.
BURKE:
Hints for an Essay on the Drama.
We are not to forget that a play is, or ought
to be, a very short composition ; that, if one pas-
sion or disposition is to be wrought up with tol-
erable success, I believe it is as much as can in
any reason be expected. If there be scenes of
distress and scenes of humour, they must either
be in a double or single plot. If there be a
double plot, there are in fact two. If they be
in checkered scenes of serious and comic, you
are obliged continually to break both the thread
of the story and the continuity of the passion;
; f in the same scene, as Mrs. V. seems to recom-
mend, it is needless to observe how absurd the
mixture must be, and how little adapted to an-
swer the genuine end of any passion. It is odd
to observe the progress of bad taste : for this
mixed passion being universally proscribed in
the regions of tragedy, it has taken refuge and
shelter in comedy, where it seems firmly estab-
lished, though no reason can be assigned why
we may not laugh in the one as well as weep in
the other. The true reason of this mixture is
to be sought for in the manners which are prev-
alent amongst a people. It has become very
fashionable to affect delicacy, tenderness of
heart, and fine feeling, and to shun all imputa-
tion of rusticity. Much mirth is very foreign tc
this character; they have introduced, therefore
a sort of neutral writing. BURKE :
Hints for an Essay on the Drama
I could wish there were a treaty made between
the French and the English theatres, in which
both parties should make considerable conces-
sions. The English ought to give up their no-
torious violations of all the unities ; and all their
massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled car-
casses, which they so frequently exhibit upon
their stage. The French should engage to
have more action and less declamation ; and
not to cram and crowd things together, to
almost a degree of impossibility, from a too
scrupulous adherence to the unities. The Eng-
lish should restrain the licentiousness of their
poets, and the French enlarge the liberty of
theirs: their poets are the greatest slaves in
their country, and that is a bold word ; ours are
the most tumultuous subjects in England, and
that is saying a good deal. Under such regu-
lations one might hope to see a play in which
one should not be lulled to sleep by the length
of a monotonical declamation, nor frightened
and shocked by the barbarity of the action.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Jan. 23, 1752.
On the Greek stage, a drama, or acted story,
consisted in reality of three dramas, called to-
gether a trilogy, and performed consecutively in
the course of one day. COLERIDGE.
Congreve and the author of The Relapse be-
ing the principals in the dispute, I satisfy them;
as for the volunteers, they will find themselves
affected with the misfortune of their friends.
JEREMY COLLIER.
Being both dramatic author and dramatic per-
former, he found himself heir to a twofold op-
probrium, and at an era of English society when
the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest.
DE QUINCEY.
I touch here but transiently ... on some
of those many rules of imitating nature which
Aristotle drew from Homer, which he fitted to
the drama; furnishing himself also with obser-
vations from the theatre when it flourished under
^Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.
DRYDEN.
The unity of piece we neither find in Aris-
totle, Horace, or any who have written of it,
till in our age the French poets first made it a
preQept of the stage. DRYDEN.
Aristotle has left undecided the duration of
the action. DRYDEN.
In the unity jf rlace they are full as scrupu-
lous, which many of their critics limit to that
very spot of ground where the play is supposed
to begin. DRYDEN.
DRAMA.
175
When in the knot of the play no other way
is left for the discovery, then let a god descend,
nd clear the business to the audience.
DRYDEN.
No incident in the piece or play but must
carry on the main design : all things else are
like six fingers to the hand, when nature can do
her work with five. DRYDEN.
One of these advantages, which Corneille has
laid down,. is the making choice of some signal
and long-expected clay, whereon the action of
the play is to depend. DRYDEN.
The catastasis, called by the Romans status,
the height and full growth of the play, we may
call properly the counter turn, which destroys
that expectation, embroils the action in new dif-
ficulties, and leaves you far distant from that hope
in which it found you. DRYDEN.
When these petty intrigues of a play are so
ill ordered that they have no coherence with the
other, I must grant that Lysidius has reason to
tax that want of due connection ; for co-ordina-
tion in a play is as dangerous and unnatural as
in a state. DRYDEN.
The propriety of thoughts and words, which
are the hidden beauties of a play, are but con-
fusedly judged in the vehemence of action.
DRYDEN.
He gives you an account of himself, and of
his returning from the country, in monologue ;
to which unnatural way of narration Terence is
subject in all his plays. DRYDEN.
A play ought to be a just image of human
nature. DRYDEN.
The French have brought on themselves that
dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination,
which may be observed in all their plays.
DRYDEN.
I maintain, against the enemies of the stage,
that patterns of piety, decently represented, may
second the precepts. DRYDEN.
The world is running mad after farce, the ex-
tremity of bad poetry; or rather the judgment
that is fallen upon dramatic poetiy.
DRYDEN.
An heroic play ought to be an imitation of an
heroic poem, and consequently love and valour
ought to be the subject of it: both these Sir
William Davenant began to shadow ; but it was
so as discoverers draw their maps with head-
lands and promontories. DRYDEN.
Ben Jonson, in his Sejanus and Catiline, has
given us this olio of a play, this unnatural mix-
ture of comedy and tragedy. DRYDEN.
I must bear this testimony to Otway's mem-
ory, that the passions are truly touched in his
Venice Preserved. DRYDEN.
The tragedy of Hamlet, for example, is crit-
ically considered to be the masterpiece of dra-
matic poetry; and the tragedy of Hamlet is
also, according to the testimony of every sort of
manager, the play, of all others, which can in-
variably be depended on to fill a theatre with
the greatest certainty, act it when and how you
will. Household Words.
Some of these masques were moral dramas,
where the virtues and vices were impersonated.
BISHOP HURD.
There are perhaps no two kinds of composi-
tion so essentially dissimilar as the drama ami
the ode. The business of the dramatist is to
keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing
appear' but his characters. As soon as he at-
tracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion
is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that
which is produced on the stage by the voice of
a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter.
Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron were
his least successful performances. They resem-
ble those pasteboard pictures invented by the
friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a
single movable head goes round twenty different
bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us
successively from the uniform of a hussar, the
furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In
all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters
and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were
discernible in an instant. But this species of
egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspi-
ration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric
poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his
own emotions.
LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.
The Greek drama, on the model of which the
Samson was written, sprang from the Ode. The
dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and natu-
rally partook of its character. The genius of
the greatest of the Athenian dramatists co-oper-
ated with the circumstances under which tragedy
made its first appearance. yEschylus was, head
and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks
had far more intercourse with the East than in
the days of Homer; and they had not yet ac-
quired that immense superiority in wa/, in sci-
ence, and in the arts, which, in the following
generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with
contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it
should seem that they still looked up, with the
veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria.
At this period, accordingly, it was natural that
the literature of Greece should be tinctured with
the Oriental style. And that style we think is
discernible in the works of Pindar and ./Eschylus.
The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew
writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct
and diction, bears a considerable resemblance
to some of his dramas. Considered as plays,
his works are absurd ; considered as choruses,
they are above all praise. If, for instance, we
examine the address of Clytaemnestra to Aga-
memnon on his return, or the description of the
seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dra-
matic writing, we shall instantly condemn them
as monstrous. But if we forget the characters,
and think only of the poetry, we shall idmit
i 7 6
DRAMA.
that it has never been surpassed in energy and
magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama
as dramatic as was consistent with its original
form. His portraits of men have a sort of simi-
larity; but it is the similarity not of a painting,
but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance,
but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides
attempted to carry the reform further. But it
was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps be-
yond any powers. Instead of correcting what
was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He
substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for
good odes. LORD MACAULAY : Milton.
Perhaps the gods and demons of ^Eschylus
may best bear a comparison with the angels and
devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian
had, as we have remarked, something of the Ori-
ental character; and the same peculiarity may
be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the
amenity and elegance which we generally find
in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged,
barbaric, and colossal. The legends of ^Eschy-
lus seem to harmonize less with the fragrant
groves and graceful porticoes in which his coun-
trymen paid their vows to the God of Light and
Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and
grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which
Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which
Hindustan still bows down to her seven-headed
idols. His favourite gods are those of the elder
generation, the sons of heaven and earth, com-
pared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling
and an upstart, the gigantic Titans and the in-
exorable Furies. Foremost among his creations
of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half
redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and im-
placable enemy of heaven. Prometheus bears
undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the
Satan of Milton. In both we find the same im-
patience of control, the same ferocity, the same
unconquerable pride. In both characters also
are mingled, though in very different proportions,
some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus,
however, is hardly superhuman enough. He
talks too much of his chains and his uneasy pos-
ture : he is rather too much depressed and agi-
tated. His resolution seems to depend on the
knowledge which he possesses that he holds the
fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the
hour of his release will surely come.
LORD MACAULAY : Milton.
Books quite worthless are quite harmless.
The sure sign of the general decline of an art
is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but
of misplaced beauty. In general, Tragedy is
corrupted by eloquence, and Comedy by wit.
The real object of the drama is the exhibition
of human character. This, we conceive, is no
arbitrary canon, originating in local and tempo-
rary associations, like those canons which regu-
late the number of acts in a play, or of syllables
in a line. To this fundamental law every other
regulation is subordinate. The situations which
most signally develop character form the best
plot. The mother-tongue of the passions is the
best style. This principle, rightly understood,
does not debar the poet from any grace of com-
position. There is no style in which some man
may not, under some circumstances, express
himself. There is, therefore, no style which the
drama rejects, none which it does not occasion-
ally require. It is in the discernment of place,
of time, and of person that the inferior artists
fail. The fantastic rhapsody of Mercutio, the
elaborate declamation of Antony, are, where
Shakspeare has placed them, natural and pleas-
ing. But Dryden would have made Mercutio
challenge Tybalt in hyperboles as fanciful aa
those in which he describes the chariot of Mab.
Corneille would have represented Antony aa
scolding and coaxing Cleopatra with all the
measured rhetoric of a funeral oration.
LORD MACAULAY:
Machiavelli, March, 1827.
No writers have injured the Comedy of Eng
land so deeply as Congreve and Sheridan.
Both were men of splendid wit and polished
taste. Unhappily, they made all their charac-
ters in their own likeness. Their works bear
the same relation to the legitimate drama which
a transparency bears to a painting. There are
no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading
into each other : the whole is lighted up with an
universal glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten
in the common blaze which illuminates all. The
flowers and fruits of the intellect abound ; but
it is the abundance of a jungle, not of a garden,
unwholesome, bewildering, unprofitable from its
very plenty, rank from its very fragrance. Every
fop, every boor, every valet, is a man of wit.
The very butts and dupes, Tattle, Witwould,
Puff, Acres, outshine the whole Hotel of Ram-
bouillet. To prove the whole system of this
school erroneous, it is only necessary to apply
the test which dissolved the enchanted Florimel,
to place the true by the false Thalia, to contrast
the most celebrated characters which have been
drawn by the writers of whom we speak with
the Bastard in King John, or the Nurse in Ro-
meo and Juliet. It was not surely from want
of wit that Shakspeare adopted so different a
manner. Benedick and Beatrice throw Mirabel
and Millamont into the shade. All the good
sayings of the facetious houses of Absolute and
Surface might have been clipped from the single
character of Falstaff without being missed. It
would have been easy for that fertile mind to
have given Bardolph and Shallow as much wit
as Prince Hal, and to have made Dogberry and
Verges retort on each other in sparkling epi-
grams. But he knew that such indiscriminate
prodigality was, to use his own admirable lan-
guage, " from the purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to
hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature."
LORD MACAULAY : Machiavelli.
In the Mandragola Machiavelli has proved
that he completely understood the nature of the
dramatic art, and possessed talents which would
have enabled him to excel in it. By the correct
and vigorous delineation of human nature, it
produces interest without a pleasing or skilful
DRAMA.
177
plot, and laughter without the least ambition of
wit. The lover, not a very delicate or generous
lover, and his adviser the parasite, are drawn
with spirit. The hypocritical confessor is an
admirable portrait. He is, if we mistake not,
the original of Father Dominic, the best comic
character of Dryden. But .old Nicias is the
glory of the piece. We cannot call to mind
anything that resembles him. The follies which
Moliere ridicules are those of affectation, not of
fatuity. Coxcombs and pedants, not absolute
simpletons, are his game. Shakspeare has in-
deed a vast assortment of fools ; but the precise
species of which we speak is not, if we remem-
ber right, to be found there. Shallow is a fool.
But his animal spirits supply, to a certain de-
gree, the place of cleverness. His talk is to that
of Sir John what soda-water is to champagne.
It has the effervescence, though not the body or
the flavour. Slender and Sir Andrew Aguecheek
are fools, troubled with an uneasy consciousness
of their folly, which, in the latter, produces
meekness and docility, and in the former, awk-
wardness, obstinacy, and confusion. Cloten is
an arrogant fool, Osric a foppish fool, Ajax a
savage fool, but Nicias is, as Thersites says of
Patroclus, a fool positive. His mind is occupied
by no strong feeling; it takes every character,
ind retains none ; its aspect is diversified, not by
>assions, but by faint and transitory semblances
>f passion, a mock joy, a mock fear, a mock
ove, a mock pride, which chase each other like
ihadows over its surface, and vanish as soon as
hey appear. He is just idiot enough to be an
object, not of pity or horror, but of ridicule. He
bears some resemblance to poor Calandrino,
whose mishaps, as recounted by Boccaccio, have
nade all Europe merry for more than four cen-
uries. He perhaps resembles still more closely
simon da Villa, to whom Bruno and Buffalmacco
)romised the love of the Countess Civilian.
S'icias is, like Simon, of a learned profession ;
ind the dignity with which he wears the doctoral
'ur renders his absurdities infinitely more gro-
esque. The old Tuscan is the very language
"or such a being. Its peculiar simplicity gives
even to the most forcible reasoning and the most
arilliant wit an infantine air, generally delight-
lul, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little
ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp
when they use it. It becomes Nicias incom-
parably, and renders all his silliness infinitely
moie silly.
LORD MACAULAY : Machiavelli.
Plautus was, unquestionably, one of the best
Latin writers; but the Casina is by no means
one of his best plays ; nor is it one which offers
great facilities to an imitator. The story is as
alien from modern habits of life as the manner
in which it is developed from the modern fashion
of composition. The lover remains in the
country and the heroine in her chamber during
the whole action, leaving their fate to be decided
by a foolish father, a cunning mother, and two
knavish servants. Machiavelli has executed his
task with judgment and taste. He has accom-
12
modated the plot to a different state of scciety,
and has very dexterously connected it with the
history of his own times. The relation of the
trick put upon the doting old lover is exquisitely
humorous. It is far superior to the correspond-
ing passage in the Latin comedy, and scarcely
yields to the account which Falstaff ghes of his
ducking.
LORD MACAULAY : Machiavelli.
The history of every literature with which we
are acquainted confirms, we think, the principles
which we have laid down. In Greece we see
the imaginative school of poetry gradually fading
into the critical. /Eschylus and Pindar were
succeeded by Sophocles, Sophocles by Euripides,
Euripides by the Alexandrian versifiers. Of these
last Theantus alone has left compositions which
deserve to be read. The splendour and gro-
tesque fairy-land of the Old Comedy, rich with
such gorgeous hues, peopled with such fantastic
shapes, and vocal alternately with the sweetest
peals of music and the loudest bursts of elvish
laughter, disappeared forever. The masterpieces
of the New Comedy are known to us by Latin
translations of extraordinary merit. From these
translations, and from the expressions of the
ancient critics, it is clear that the original com-
positions were distinguished by grace and sweet-
ness, that they sparkled with wit and abounded
with pleasing sentiment, but that the creative
power was gone. Julius Caesar called Terence
a half Menander, a sure proof that Menander
was not a quarter Aristophanes.
LORD MACAULAY :
John Dryden, Jan. 1828.
No species of fiction is so delightful to us as
the old English drama. Even its inferior pro-
ductions possess a charm not to be found in any
other kind of poetry. It is the most lucid mir-
ror that ever was held up to nature. The crea-
tions of the great dramatists of Athens produce
the effect of magnificent sculptures, conceived
by a mighty imagination, polished with the ut-
most delicacy, embodying ideas of ineffable
majesty and beauty, but cold, pale, and rigid,
with no bloom on the cheek, and no speculation
in the eye. In all the draperies, the figures, and
the faces, in the lovers and the tyrants, the Bac-
chanals and the Furies, there is the same marble
chillness and deadness. Most of the characters
of the French stage resemble the waxen gentle-
men and ladies in the window of a perfumer,
rouged, curled, and bedizened, but fixed in such
stiff attitudes, and staring with eyes expressive
of such utter unmeaningness, that they cannot
produce an illusion for a single moment. In the
English plays alone is to be found the warmth,
the mellowness, and the reality of painting.
We know the minds of the men and women as
we know the faces of the men and women of
Vandyke.
The excellence of these works is in a great
measure the result of two peculiarities which the
critics of the French school consider as defects,
from the mixture of tragedy and comedy, and
from the length and extent of the action. The
DRAMA.
former is necessary to render the drama a just
representation of a world in which the laughers
and the weepers are perpetually jostling each
other, in which every event has its serious and
ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form
an intimate acquaintance with characters with
which we could not possibly become familiar
during the few hours to which the unities re-
strict the poet. In this respect the works of
Shukspeare, in particular, are miracles of art.
In a piece which may be read aloud in three
hours we see a character unfold all its recesses
to us. We see it change with the change of
circumstances. The petulant youth rises into
the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse
and courteous philanthropist sours into a hater
and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered,
by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive
moralist. The veteran general, distinguished
by coolness, sagacity, and self-command, sinks
under a conflict between love strong as death
and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and
loyal subject passes, step by step, to the extrem-
ities of human depravity. We trace his progress
from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition to
the cynical melancholy of his impenitent re-
morse. Yet in these pieces there are no unnat-
ural transitions. Nothing is omitted ; nothing
is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow
as is the compass within which they are exhib-
ited, they shock us as little as the gradual alter-
ations of those familiar faces which we see every
evening and every morning. The magical skill
of the poet resembles that of the Dervise in the
Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven
years into the single moment during* which the
king held his head under the water.
LORD MACAULAY : John Dryden.
But the Puritans drove imagination from its
last asylum. They prohibited theatrical repre-
sentations, and stigmatized the whole race of
dramatists as enemies of morality and religion.
Much that is objectionable may be found in the
writers whom they reprobated; but whether
they took the best measures for stopping the
evil appears to us very doubtful, and must, we
think, have appeared doubtful to themselves,
when, after the lapse of a few years, they saw
the unclean spirit whom they had cast out return
to his old haunts, with seven others fouler than
himself.
By the extinction of the drama, the fashion-
able school of poetry a school without truth,
of sentiment or harmony of versification,
without the powers of an earlier or the correct-
ness of a later age was left to enjoy undisputed
ascendency. A vicious ingenuity, a morbid
quickness to perceive resemblances and analo-
gies between things apparently heterogeneous,
constituted almost its only claim to admiration.
Suckling was dead. Milton was absorbed in
political and theological controversy. If Waller
differed from the Cowleian sect of writers, he
diifered for the worse. He had as little poetry
e.s they, and much less wit ; nor is the languor
of his verses less offensive than the ruggedness
of theirs. In Denham alone the faint dawn of
a better manner was discernible.
LORD MACAULAY : John Dryden.
We blame Dryden, not because the persons
of his dramas are not Moors or Americans, but
because they are not men and women ; not
because love, such as he represents it, could
not exist in a harem or in a wigwam, but be-
cause it could not exist anywhere. As is the
love of his heroes, such are all their other
emotions. All their qualities, their courage,
their generosity, their pride, are on the same
colossal scale. Justice and prudence are virtues
which can exist only in a moderate degree, and
which change their nature and their name if
pushed to excess. Of justice and prudence,
therefore, Dryden leaves his favourites destitute.
He did not care to give them what he could
not give without measure. The tyrants and
ruffians are merely the heroes altered by a few
touches, similar to those which transformed the
honest face of Sir Roger de Coverley into the
Saracen's head. Through the grin and frown
the original features are still perceptible.
It is in the tragi-comedies that these absurdities
strike us most. The two races of men, or rather
the angels and the baboons, are there presented
to us together. We meet in one scene with
nothing but gross, selfish, unblushing, lying
libertines of both sexes, who, as a punishment,
we suppose, for their depravity, are condemned
to talk nothing but prose. But, as soon as we
meet with people who speak in verse, we know
that we are in society which would have enrap-
tured the Cathos and Madelon of Moliere, in
society for which Oroondates would have too
little of the lover, and Clelia too much of the
coquette.
As Dryden was unable to render his plays
interesting by means of that which is the pecu-
liar and appropriate excellence of the drama, it
was necessary that he should find some substi-
tute for it. In his comedies he supplied its
place sometimes by wit, but more frequently by
intrigue, by disguises, mistakes of persons, dia-
logues at cross-purposes, hair-breadth escapes,
perplexing concealments, and surprising dis-
closures. He thus succeeded at least in making
these pieces very amusing.
In his tragedies he trusted, and not altogether
without reason, to his diction and his versifica-
tion. It was on this account, in all probability,
that he so eagerly adopted, and so reluctantly
abandoned, the practice of rhyming in his plays
W r hat is unnatural appears less unnatural in that
species of verse than in lines which approach
more nearly to common conversation ; and in
the management of the heroic couplet Dryden
has never been equalled. It is unnecessary t'
urg'e any arguments against a fashion now uni-
versally condemned. But it is worthy of obser-
vation that, though Dryden was deficient in that
talent which blank verse exhibits to the greatest
advantage, and was certainly the best writer of
heroic rhyme in our language, yet the plays
which have, from the time of their first appear-
DRAMA.
'79
ance, been considered as his best, are in blank
verse. No experiment can be more decisive.
LORD MACAULAY : John Dryden.
Sardanapalus is more coarsely drawn than
any dramatic personage that we can remember.
His heroism and his effeminacy, his contempt
of death and his dread of a weighty helmet, his
kingly resolution to be seen in the foremost
ranks, and the anxiety with which he calls for
a locking-glass, that he may be seen to advan-
tage, are contrasted, it is true, with all the point
of Juvenal. Indeed, the hint of the character
seems to have been taken from what Juvenal
says of Otho :
" Speculum civilis sarcina belli.
Nimirum summi duels est occidere Galbam,
Et curare cutem summi constantia civis,
Hedriaci in campo spolium affectare Palati,
Et pressum in faciem digitis extenders panem."
These are excellent lines in a satire. But it is
not the business of the dramatist to exhibit
characters in this sharp antithetical way. It is
not thus that Shakspeare makes Prince Hal rise
from the rake of Eastcheap into the hero of
Shrewsbury, and sink again into the rake of
Eastcheap. It is not thus that Shakspeare has
exhibited the union of effeminacy and valour in
Antony. A dramatist cannot commit a greater
error than that of following those pointed de-
scriptions of character in which satirists and
historians indulge so much. It is by rejecting
what is natural that satirists and historians pro-
duce these striking characters. Their great
object generally is to ascribe to every man as
many contradictory qualities as possible ; and
this is an object easily attained. By judicious
selection and judicious exaggeration the intellect
and the disposition of any human being might
be described as being made up of nothing but
startling contrasts. If the dramatist attempts- to
create a being answering to one of these de-
scriptions, he fails, because he reverses an im-
perfect analytical process. He produces, not a
man, but a personified epigram. Very eminent
writers have fallen into this snare. Ben Jonson
has given us a Hermogenes taken from the
lively lines of Horace; but the inconsistency
which was so amusing in the satire appears
unnatural and disgusts us in the play. Sir
Walter Scott has committed a far more glaring
error of the same kind in the novel of Peveril.
Admiring, as every judicious reader must admire,
the keen and vigorous lines in which Dryden
satirized the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Walter
attempted to make a Duke of Buckingham to
suit them, a real living Zimri; and he made, not
a man, but the most grotesque of all monsters.
LORD MACAULAY:
Moore's Life of Byron , June, 1831.
The best proof that the religion of the people
was of this mixed kind is furnished by the
Drama of that age. No man would bring un-
popular opinions prominently forward in a play
intended for representation. And we may safely
conclude that feelings and opinions which per-
vade the whole Dramatic literature of a gener-
ation are feelings and opinions of which the
men of that generation generally partook. The
greatest and most popular dramatists of the
Elizabethan age treat religious subjects in a.
very remarkable manner. They speak respect-
fully of the fundamental doctrines of Christian-
ity. But they speak neither like Catholics nor
like Protestants, but like persons who are waver-
ing between the two systems, or who have made
a system for themselves out of parts selected
from both. They seem to i old some of the
Romish rites and doctrines in high respect.
They treat the vow of celibacy, for example,
so tempting and, in later times, so common a
subject for ribaldry, with mysterious reverence.
Almost every member of a religious order whom
they introduce is a holy and venerable man.
We remember in their plays nothing resembling
the coarse ridicule with which the Catholic
religion and its ministers were assailed, two
generations later, by dramatists who wished to
please the multitude. We remember no Friar
Dominic, no Father Foigard, among the charac-
ters drawn by those great poets. The scene at
the close of the Knight of Malta might have
been written by a fervent Catholic. Massinger
shows a great fondness for ecclesiastics of the
Romish Church, and has even gone so far as to
bring a virtuous and interesting Jesuit on the
stage. Ford, in that fine play which it is pain-
ful to read and scarcely decent to name, assigns
a highly creditable part to the Friar. The
partiality of Shakspeare for Friars is well
known. In Hamlet, the Ghost complains thai
he died without extreme unction, and, in de-
fiance of the article which condemns the doc-
trine of purgatory, declares that he is
" Confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in his days of nature,
Are burnt and purged away."
These lines, we suspect, would have raised 9
tremendous storm in the theatre at any time
during the reign of Charles the Second. They
were clearly not written by a zealous Protestant,
or for zealous Protestants. Yet the author of
King John and Henry the Eighth was surely no
friend to papal supremacy.
There is, we think, only one solution of the
phenomena which we find in the history and in
the drama of that age. The religion of the
English was a mixed religion, like that of the
Samaritan settlers, described in the second book
of Kings, who " feared the Lord, and served
their graven images;" like that of the Judaizing
Christians who blended the ceremonies and
doctrines of the synagogue with those of the
church ; like that of the Mexican Indians, who,
during many generations after the subjugation
of their race, continued to unite with the rites
learned from their conquerors the worship of
the grotesque idols which had been adored by
Montezuma and Guatemozin.
LORD MACAULAY:
Burhigh and his Times, April, 1832.
The immoral English writers of the seven-
teenth century are indeed much less excusable
i8o
DRAMA.
than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst
English writings of the seventeenth century are
decent compared with much that has been be-
queathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato,
we have little doubt, was a much better man
than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written
things at which Sir George Etherege would
have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley, even
in those wild orgies at the lock in Bow Street
for which they were pelted by the rabble, and
fined by the Court of King's Bench, would
never have dared to hold such discourse as
passed between Socrates and Phsedrus on that
fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the
fountain warbled at their feet and the cicadas
chirped overhead. If it be, as we think it is,
desirable that an English gentleman should be
well informed touching the government and the
manners of little commonwealths which both in
place and time are far removed from us, whose
independence has been more than two thousand
years extinguished, whose language has not been
spoken for ages, and whose ancient magnificence
is attested only by a few broken columns and
friezes, much more must it be desirable that he
should be intimately acquainted with the history
of the public mind of his own country, and
with the causes, the nature, and the extent of
those revolutions of opinion and feeling which
during the last two centuries have alternately
raised and depressed the standard of our national
morality. And knowledge of this sort is to be
very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary de-
bates, from state papers, and from the works of
grave historians. It must either not be acquired
at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal of
the light literature which has at various periods
been fashionable. LORD MACAULAY:
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, Jan. 1841.
We can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh
Hunt, who seems to hold that there is little or
no ground for the charge of immorality so often
brought against the literature of the Restoration.
We do not blame him for not bringing to the
judgment-seat the merciless rigour of Lord
Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious
and impudent offenders as those who are now
at the bar deserved at least the gentle rebuke
of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole
matter a little too much in the easy style of
Lucio ; and perhaps his exceeding lenity dis-
poses us to be somewhat too severe. And yet
it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this
part of our literature is a disgrace to our lan-
guage and our national character. It is clever,
indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the
most emphatic sense of the words, earthly, sen-
saal, devilish. Its indecency, though perpetually
such as is condemned not less by the rules of
good taste than by those of morality, is not, in
our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singu-
larly inhuman spirit. We have here Belial, not,
as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, " grace-
ful and humane," but with the iron eye and
cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We find our-
selves in a world in which the ladies are like
very profligate, impudent, and unfeeling men,
and in which the men are too bad for any place
but Pandsemonium or Norfolk Island. We are
surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts likr
the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire ol
hell. LORD MACAULAY :
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences
and those of his contemporaries by pleading
the example of the earlier English dramatists ;
and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there
is force in the plea. We altogether differ from
this opinion. The crime charged is not mere
coarseness of expression. The terms which are
delicate in one age become gross in the next.
The diction of the English version of the Pen-
tateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not
have ventured to imitate; and Addison, the
standard of moral purity in his own age, used
many phrases which are now proscribed.
Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain
noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere
matter of fashion. Morality is not at all inter-
ested in the question. But morality is deeply
interested in this, that what is immoral shall not
be presented to the imagination of the young
and susceptible in constant connection with
what is attractive. For every person who has
observed the law of association in his own mind
and in the minds of others knows that whatever
is constantly presented to the imagination in
connection with what is attractive will itself
become attractive. There is undoubtedly a
great deal of indelicate writing in Fletcher and
Massinger, and more than might be wished even
in Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, who are com-
paratively pure. But it is impossible to trace in
their plays any systematic attempt to associate
vice with those things which men value most
and desire most, and virtue with everything
ridiculous and degrading. And such a sys-
tematic attempt we find in the whole dramatic
literature of the generation which followed the
return of Charles the Second.
LORD MACAULAY:
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.
The circumscription of time wherein the
whole drama begins and ends is, according to
ancient rule and best example, within the space
of twenty-four hours. MlLTON.
This would make them soon perceive what
despicable creatures our common rhymers and
play-writers be. MILTON.
Scaliger defines a mime to be a poem imi-
tating any action to stir up laughter.
MILTON.
The Romans had three plays acted one after
another on the same subject : the first, a real
tragedy; the second, the ateblan ; the third, a
satire or erode, a kind of farce of one act.
ROSCOMMON.
The stage, when it was trodden by the mem-
bers of the royal household, and, on great
occasions, by the graduates of universities anci
DRAMA. DREAMS.
181
the students of inns of court, was justly held
the model of pronunciation. But that golden
age of dramatic literature and dramatic life has
long since passed away.
WILLIAM RUSSELL.
Men of wit, learning, and virtue might strike
out every offensive or unbecoming passage from
SWIFT.
DREAMS.
Dreams are an instance of that agility and
perfection which is natural to the faculties of
the mind when they are disengaged from the
body. The soul is clogged and retarded in her
operations when she acts in conjunction with a
companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in its
motions. But in dreams it is wonderful to
observe with what a sprightliness and alacrity
she exerts herself. The slow of speech make
unpremeditated harangues, or converse readily
in languages that they are but little acquainted
with. The grave abound in pleasantries, the
dull in repartees and points of wit. There is
not a more painful action of the mind than in-
vention ; yet in dreams it works with that ease
and activity that we are not sensible of when
the faculty is employed. For instance, I believe
every one, some time or other, dreams that he
is reading papers, books, or letters ; in which
case the invention prompts so readily that the
mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own
suggestions for the compositions of another.
ADDISON : Spectator, No. 487.
Men mark when they [prophecies] hit, and
never mark when they miss ; as they do, gen-
erally, also of dreams.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXXVI., Of Prophecies.
The records of history, both sacred and pro-
fane, abound in instances of dreams which it is
impossible to account for on any other hypo-
thesis than that of a supernatural interposition.
BRANDE.
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our
sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to
be but the waking of the soul. It is the litiga-
tion of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and
our waking conceptions do not match the fancies
of our sleeps,
SIR T. BROWNE : Religio Medici, XI.
icre is surely a nearer apprehension of any-
thing that delights us in our dreams, than in our
waked senses: without this I were unhappy;
for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever
whispering unto me that I am from my friend;
but my friendly dreams in the night requite me,
and make me think I am within his arms. I
thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for
roy good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them
unto reasonable desires and such as can be con-
tent with a fit of happiness.
SIR T. BROWNE : Religio Medici, XI.
The circumstances which a man imagines
himself in during sleep are generally such as
entirely favour his inclinations, good or bad,
and give him imaginary opportunities of pur-
suing them to the utmost : so that his temper
will lie fairly open to his view while he con-
siders how it is moved when free from those
constraints which the accidents of real life put
it under. Dreams are certainly the result of
our waking thoughts, and our daily hopes and
fears are what give the mind such nimble
relishes of pleasure and such severe touches
of pain in its midnight rambles. A man that
murders his enemy, or deserts his friend, in a
dream, had need to guard his temper against
revenge and ingratitude, and take heed that he
be not tempted to do a vile thing in the pursuit
of false or the neglect of true honour.
BYROM : Spectator, No. 586.
It is certain the imagination may be so differ-
ently affected in sleep that our actions of the
day may be either rewarded or punished with a
little age of happiness or misery. St. Austin
was of opinion that, if in Paradise there was
the same vicissitude of sleeping and waking as
in the present world, the dreams of its inhab-
itants would be very happy.
And so far at present our dreams are in our
power, that they are generally conformable to
our waking thoughts.
BYROM : Spectator, No. 593.
Beware that thou never tell thy dreams in
company; for, notwithstanding thou mayest takft
a pleasure in telling thy dreams, the company
will take no pleasure in hearing them.
EPICTETUS.
Jf we can sleep without dreaming, it is well
that painful dreams are avoided. If while we
sleep we can have any pleasing dreams, it is,
as the French say, tant gagne, so much added
to the pleasure of life. B. FRANKLIN.
Dreaming is not hallucination, and -hallucina^
tion is not dreaming, but there are obvious re-
semblances between them. In dreaming, the
brain is neither quite awake nor quite asleep.
The mind is a wizard chamber of dissolving
views. In dreams, the picturing power of the
mind is active, whilst the attention, the judg-
ment, and the will are dormant. In dreams,
the pictures pass of themselves, the dissolving
views roll on, the images of the imagination
shine and mingle uncorrected by the sensations
and uncontrolled by the will. All the pictures
apparently come and go incoherently. The
recollections of dreams are confused and chaotic,
but the recollections are not the dreams. The
incoherence is not real. Proof of this fact is
to be found in the observation that there is a
similar incoherence in the successive pictures of
the waking mind, when the images of the
chamber of imagery are neither dominated by
the will nor observed with attention. There is
always a relation to the order of occurrence of
the sensations in the order of the ideas. The
182
DREAMS. DRESS.
incoherence of the dreams of the sound mind
is simply imperfect recollection, and the absence
or dormancy of attention and volition.
Household Words.
A body may as well lay too little as too much
stress upon a dream, but the less we heed them
the better. L'EsTRANGE.
In this retirement of the mind from the senses,
it retains a yet more incoherent manner of think-
ing, which we call dreaming. LOCKE.
Dreaming is the having of ideas whilst the
outward senses are stopped, not suggested by
any external objects, or known occasions, nor
under the rule or conduct of the understanding.
LOCKE.
Reflect upon the different state of the mind
in thinking, which those instances of attention,
reverie, and dreaming naturally enough suggest.
LOCKE.
Dreams and prophecies do thus much good :
they make a man go on with boldness and cour-
age, upon a danger or a mistress : if he obtains,
he attributes much to them ; if he miscarries, he
thinks no more of them, or is no more thought
of himself. SELDEN : Table Talk.
A very remarkable circumstance, and an im-
portant point of analogy, is to be found in the
extreme rapidity with which the mental opera-
tions are performed, or, rather, with which the
material changes on which the ideas depend are
excited in the hemispherical ganglia. It would
appear as if a whole series of acts, that would
really occupy a long lapse of time, pass ideally
through the mind in one instant. We have in
dreams no true perception of the lapse of time
a strange property of mind! for if such be also
its property when entered into the eternal dis-
embodied state, time will appear to us eternity.
The relations of space as well as of time are
also annihilated ; so that whilst almost an eter-
nity is compressed into a moment, infinite space
is traversed more swiftly than by real thought.
Dix. FORBES WINSLOW.
DRESS.
I cannot conclude my paper without observ-
ing that Virgil has very finely touched upon
this female passion for dress and show, in the
character of Camilla; who, though she seems
t( have shaken off all the other weaknesses of
her sex, ,is still described as a woman in this
particular. ADUISON : Spectator, No. 15.
The peacock, in all his pride, does not display
half the colours that appear in the garments of
a British lady when she is dressed.
ADDISON.
There is not so variable a thing in nature as
a lady's head-dress. Within my own memory,
1 have known it to rise and fall within thirty
degrees. ADDISON.
I would desire the fair sex to consider how
impossible it is for them to add anything that
can be ornamental to what is already the master-
piece of nature. The head has the most beau-
tiful appearance, as well as the highest station,
in the human figure. Nature has laid out all
her art in beautifying the face; she has touched
it with vermilion, planted in it a double row of
ivory, made it the seat of smiles and blushes,
lighted it up and enlivened it with the bright-
ness of the eyes, hung it on each side with cu-
rious organs of sense, given it airs and graces
that cannot be described, and surrounded it with
such a flowing shade of hair as sets all its
beauties in the most agreeable light. In short,
she seems to have designed the head as the cu-
pola to the most glorious of her works ; and
when we load it with such a pile of supernu-
merary ornaments, we destroy the symmetiy of
the human figure, and foolishly contrive to call
off the eye from great and real beauties, to child-
ish gew-gaws, ribands, and bone-lace.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 98.
We cannot believe our posterity will think so
disrespectfully of their great-grandmothers as
that they made themselves monstrous to appear
amiable. ADDISON.
A face which is over-flushed appears to ad-
vantage in the deepest scarlet; and the darkest
complexion is not a little alleviated by a black
hood. ADDISON.
It. would not be an impertinent design to
make a kind of an old Roman wardrobe, where
you should see togas and tunicas, the chlamys
and trabea, and all the different vests and orna-
ments so often mentioned in the Greek and
Roman authors. ADDISON.
It is not every man that can afford to wear a
shabby coat : and worldly wisdom dictates to
her disciples the propriety of dressing some-
what beyond their means, but of living some-
what within them : for every one sees how we
dress, but none see how we live, except we choose
to let them. But the truly great are, by univer-
sal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, and
may live or dress as they please.
COLTON: Lacon.
I understand that in France, though the use
of rouge be general, the use of white paint is
far from being so. In England, she that uses
one commonly uses both. Now, all white paints,
or lotions, or whatever they may be called, are
mercurial ; consequently poisonous, consequently
ruinous in time to the constitution. The Miss
B above mentioned was a miserable witness
of the truth, it being certain that her flesh fell
from her bones before she died. Lady Coven-
try was hardly a less melancholy proof of it;
and a London physician perhaps, were he at
liberty to blab, could publish a bill of female
mortality of a length that would astoi ish us.
Cow PER :
To Rev. W. Unwin, May 3, 1784.
DRESS.
An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with
jewels nothing car become. DRYDEN.
All paints may be said to be noxious. They
injure the skin, obstruct perspiration, and thus
frequently lay the foundation for cutaneous af-
fections. DR. R. DUNGLISON.
A French woman is a perfect architect in
dress : she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes
the orders ; she never tricks out a squabby Doric
shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak with-
out metaphor, she conforms to general fashion
only when it happens not to be repugnant to
private beauty.
The English ladies, on the contrary, seem to
have no oilier standard of grace but the run of
the town. If fashion gives the word, every
distinction of beauty, complexion, or stature
ceases. Sweeping trains, Prussian bonnets, and
trollopees, as like each other as if cut from the
same piece, level all to one standard. The
Mall, the gardens, and the playhouses are rilled
with ladies in uniform; and their whole appear-
ance shows as little variety of taste as if their
clothes were bespoke by the colonel of a march-
ing regiment, or fancied by the artist who dresses
the three battalions of guards.
But not only the ladies of every shape and
complexion, but of every age too, are possessed
of this unaccountable passion for levelling all
distinction in dress. The lady of no quality
travels first behind the lady of some quality ;
and a woman of sixty is as gaudy as her grand-
daughter.
GOLDSMITH : Essays, No. XV.
Nothing can be better calculated to increase
the price of silk than the present manner of
dressing. *A lady's train is not bought but at
some expense, and after it has swept the public
walks for a very few evenings, is fit to be worn
no longer; more silk must be bought in order
to repair the breach, and some ladies of peculiar
economy are thus found to patch up their tails
eight or ten times in a season. This unneces-
sary consumption may introduce poverty here,
but then we shall be the richer for it in China.
GOLDSMITH :
Citizen of the World, Letter LXXXI.
Love, in modern times, has been the tailor's
best friend. Every suitor of the nineteenth
century spends more than his spare cash on
personal adornments. A faultless fit, a glisten-
ing hat, tight gloves, and tighter boots proclaim
the imminent peril of his position.
household Words.
Declining ladies, especially married ladies,
are more given, I think, than men, to neglect
their personal appearance, when they are con-
scious that the bloom of their youth is gone. I
do not speak of state occasions, of set dinner-
parties and full-dress balls, but of the daily
meetings of domestic life. Now, however, is
the time, above all others, when the wife must
determine to remain the pleasing wife, and
retain her John Anderson's affections to the last,
by neatness, taste, and appropriate variety of
dress. That a lady has fast-growing daughters,
strapping sons, and a husband hard at work at
his office all day long, is no reason why she
should ever enter the family circle with rumpled
hair, soiled cap, or unfastened gown. The
prettiest woman in the world would be spoiled
by such sins in her toilette.
House hold Words.
I do not speak of the time dear to the hearts
of patriotic Englishmen, when King Stephen
resided here, and probably provided himself in
his native capital with those expensive habili-
ments which Shakspeare has not disdained to
celebrate. And what a fine touch of character
it is, to make that gross and coarse rival cf
Matilda break forth into such vulgar reflections
on the tradesman who supplied the clothes!
Household Words.
His best waistcoat (which I remember, poor
fellow, to have been the same for a long course
of years) retained to the last a brilliancy of
which words can give but a feeble idea ; it rep.
resented, by sprigs and threads formed of tho
precious metals, upon a satin ground, the firma-
ment, sun, moon, and stars competing upon it
altogether with an equal fervency ; and this celes-
tial waistcoat was Mr. Janty's pride. One of the
few ushers whom I ever saw assert his personal
dignity was this gentleman, on the occasion of
an insult being offered to his favourite garment.
A boy of the name of Jones pointed out this
miracle of art, one Sunday, with his finger, to
the rest of us, as not being altogether the sort
of pattern that is worn for morning costume;
and Mr. Janty knocked him down with a box
upon his right ear, picking him up with a box
upon his left immediately, observing that he
hoped he (Mr. Janty) knew how to dress him-
self like a gentleman. household Words.
Some years ago, we, the writer, not being in
Griggs and Bodger's, took the liberty of buying
a great-coat which we saw exposed for sale in
the Burlington Arcade, London, aud which
appeared to be in our eyes the most sensible
great-coat we had ever seen. Taking the further
liberty to wear this great-coat after we had
bought it, we became a sort of Spectre, eliciting
the wonder and terror of our fellow-creatures as
we flitted along the streets. We accompanied
the coat to Switzerland for six months ; and,
although it was perfectly new there, we found
it was not regarded as a portent of the least
importance. We accompanied it to Paris for
another six months; and, although it was per-
fectly new there too, nobody minded it. This
coat, so intolerable to Britain, was nothing more
nor less than the loose wide-sleeved mantle,
easy to put on, easy to put off, and crushing
nothing beneath it, which everybody now wears.
household Words.
Take away this measure from our dress and
habits, and all is turned into such paint, and
glitter, and ridiculous ornaments, as are a reaj
shame to the wearer. LAW.
i8 4
DESS;D YD EN.
People lavish it profusely in tricking up their
children in fine clothes, and yet starve their
minds. LOCKE.
As the index tells us the contents of stories,
and directs to the particular chapter, even so
does the outward habit and superficial order of
garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of
the spirit and demonstratively point (as it were
a manual note from the margin) all the internal
quality of .the soul ; and there cannot be a more
evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor,
degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding, than
a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly
outside. MASSINGER.
Men's apparel is commonly made according
to their conditions, and often governed by their
garments; for the person that is gowned is, by
his gown, put in mind of gravity, and also re-
strained from lightness by the very unaptness
of his weed. EDMUND SPENSER.
To this end, nothing is to be more carefully
consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this
is the single excellence; for to be what some
people call fine, is the same vice in that case, as
to be florid is in writing or speaking. I h|ive
studied and writ on this important subject, until
I almost despair of making reformation in the
females of this island; where we have more
beauty than any spot in the universe, if we did
not disguise it by false garniture and detract
from it by impertinent improvements.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatfer, No. 212.
It is an assertion which admits of much proof,
that a stranger of tolerable sense, dressed like a
gentleman, will be better received by those of
quality above him, than one of much better
parts whose dress is regulated by the rigid
notions of frugality. A man's appearance falls
within the censure of every one that sees him ;
his parts and learning very few are judges of;
and even upon these few they cannot at first be
well intruded; for policy and good breeding will
counsel him to be reserved among strangers,
and to support himself only by the common
spirit of conversation.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 360.
'I fancied it must be very surprising to any one
who enters into a detail of fashions to consider
how far the vanity of mankind has laid itself
out in dress, what a prodigious number of peo-
ple it maintains, and what a circulation of
money it occasions. Providence in this case
makes use of the folly which we will not give
up, and it becomes instrumental to the support
of those who are willing to labour.
SIR R. STEELE : Spectator, No. 478.
Employ their wit and humour in choosing and
matching of patterns and colours. SWIFT.
How naturally do you apply your hands to
each other's lappets, ruffles, and mantuas !
SWIFT.
Let women paint their eyes with tints of
chastity, insert into tlieir ears the word of God,
tie the yoke of Christ around their necks, and
adorn their whole persons with the silk of sane
tity and the damask of devotion; let them adopt
that chaste and simple, that neat and elegant
style of dress which so advantageously displays
the charms of real beauty, instead of those pre
posterous fashions and fantastical draperies ol
dress which, while they conceal some few de
fects of person, expose so many defects of mi no,
and sacrifice to ostentatious finery all those mild,
amiable, and modest virtues by which the female
character is so pleasingly adorned.
TERTULUAN.
DRYDEN.
Mr. Dryden wrote more like a scholar; and,
though the greatest master of poetry, he wanted
that easiness, that air of freedom and uncon
straint which is more sensibly to be perceive*,
than described. FELTON.
His literature, though not always free from
ostentation, will be commonly found either ob-
vious, and made his own by the art of dressing
it ; or superficial, which, by what he gives,
shows what he wanted ; or erroneous, hastily
collected, and negligently scattered.
Yet it cannot be said that his genius is ever
unprovided of matter, or that his fancy lan-
guishes in penury of ideas. His works abound
with knowledge, and sparkle with illustrations.
There is scarcely any science or faculty that
does not supply him with occasional images and
lucky similitudes; every page discovers a mind
very widely acquainted both with art and nature,
and in full possession of great stores of intel-
lectual wealth. Of him that knows much it is
natural to suppose that he has read with dili-
gence : yet I rather believe that the knowledge
of Dryden was gleaned from accidental intel-
ligence and various conversation, by a quick
apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy
memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, and a
powerful digestion ; by vigilance that permitted
nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of
reflection that suffered nothing useful to be lost.
DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Dryden.
But Dryden was, as we have said, one of
those writers in whom the period of imagination
does not precede, but follow, the period of
observation and reflection.
His plays, his rhyming plays in particular, are
admirable subjects for those who wish to study
the morbid anatomy of the drama. He was
utterly destitute of the power of exhibiting real
human beings. Even in the far inferior talent
of composing characters out of those elements
into which the imperfect process of our reason
can resolve them, he was very deficient. His
men are not. even good personifications; they
are not well-assorted assemblages of qualities.
Now and then, indeed, he seizes a veiy coarse
and marked distinction, and gives us, not a like-
ness, but a strong caricature, in which a singl*
DRYDEN.
185
peculiarity is protruded, and everything else
neglected; like the Marquis of Granby at an
inn-door, whom we know by nothing but his
baldness; or Wilkes, who is Wilkes only in his
squint. These are the best specimens of his
skill. For most of his pictures seem, like Turkey
carpets, to have been expressly designed not to
resemble anything in the heavens above, in the
earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
The latter manner he practises most frequently
in his tragedies, the former in his comedies.
The comic characters are, without mixture,
loathsome and despicable. The men of Ether-
ege and Vanbrugh are bad enough. Those of
omollett are perhaps worse. But they do not
approach to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the
\Voodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The
vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce
hard impudence, to which we know nothing
comparable. Their love is the appetite of
beasts; their friendship the confederacy of
knaves. The ladies seem to have been expressly
created to form helps meet for such gentlemen.
In deceiving and insulting their old fathers they
do not, perhaps, exceed the license which, by
immemorial prescription, has been allowed to
heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob
strong boxes, put up their favours to auction,
l>etray their friends, abuse their rivals in the
style of Billingsgate, and invite their lovers in
the language of the Piazza. These, it must be
remembered, are not the valets and waiting-
women, the Mascarilles and Nerines, but the
recognized heroes and heroines who appear as
the representatives of good society, and who, at
the end of the fifth act, marry and live very
happily ever after. The sensuality, baseness,
and malice of their natures is unredeemed by
any quality of a different description, by any
touch of kindness, or even by any honest burst
of hearty hatred and revenge. We are in a
world where there is no humanity, no veracity,
no sense of shame, a world for which any
good-natured man would gladly take in ex-
change the society of Milton's devils. But as
soon as we enter the regions of Tragedy we
find a great change. There is no lack of fine
sentiment there. Metastasio is surpassed in his
own department. Scuderi is out-scuderied. We
are introduced to people whose proceedings we
can trace to no motive, of whose feelings we
can form no more idea than of a sixth sense.
We have left a race of creatures whose love is
as delicate and affectionate as the passion which
an alderman feels for a turtle. We find our-
selves among beings whose love is a purely
disinterested emotion, a loyalty extending to
passive obedience, a religion, like that of the
Quietists, unsupported by any sanction of hope
or fear. We see nothing but despotism without
power, and sacrifices without compensation.
LORD MACAULAY:
John Dryden, Jan. 1828.
^ If ever Shakspeare rants, it is not when his
imagination is hurrying him along, but when he
is hurrying his imagination along, when his
rnind is for a moment jaded, when, as was said
of Euripides, he resembles a lion, who excites
his own fury by lashing himself with his tail.
What happened to Shakspeare from the occa-
sional suspension of his powers happened to
Dryden from constant impotence. He, like his
confederate Lee, had judgment enough to ap-
preciate the great poets of the preceding age,
but not judgment enough to shun competition
with them. He felt and admired their wild and
daring sublimity. That it belonged to another age
than that in which he lived, and required other
talents than those which he possessed, that in
aspiring to emulate it he was wasting in a hope-
less attempt powers which might render him
pre-eminent in a different career, was a lesson
which he did not learn till late. As those
knavish enthusiasts, the French prophets, courted
inspiration by mimicking the vrithings, swoon-
ings, and gaspings which they considered as its
symptoms, he attempted, by affected fits of poet-
ical fury, to bring on a real paroxysm ; and, like
them, he got nothing but distortions for his pains.
LORD MACAULAY : John Dryden.
Some years before his death, Dryden alto-
gether ceased to write for the stage. He had
turned his powers in a new direction, with suc-
cess the most splendid and decisive. His taste
had gradually awakened his creative faculties.
The first rank in poetry was beyond his reach ;
but he challenged and secured the most honour-
able place in the second. His imagination re-
sembled the wings of an ostrich : it enabled him
to run, though not to soar. When he attempted
the highest flights, he became ridiculous ; but
while he remained in a lower region, he out
stripped all competitors.
All his natural and all his acquired powers
fitted him to found a good critical school of
poetry. Indeed, he carried his reforms too far
for his age. After his death our literature retro-
graded ; and a century was necessary to bring it
back to the point at which he left it. The gen-
eral soundness and healthfulness of his mental
constitution, his information, of vast superficies
though of small volume, his wit, scarcely infe-
rior to that of the most distinguished followers
of Donne, his eloquence, grave, deliberate, and
commanding, could not save him from disgrace-
ful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised
him far above the level of Boileau. His com-
mand of language was immense. With him
died the secret of the old poetical diction of
England, the art of producing rich effects by
familiar words. In the following century it w.s
as completely lost as the Gothic method of
painting glass, and was but poorly supplied
by the laborious and tessellated imitations of
Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was
the first writer under whose skilful management
the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and
pleasing verse. In this department he suc-
ceeded as completely as his contemporary Gib-
bons succeeded in the similar enterprise of
carving the most delicate flowers from heart
of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of
i86
DUELLING. DULNESS. DURATION. DUTY.
language became ductile at his touch. His
versification in the same manner, while it gave
the first model of that neatness and precision
which the following generation esteemed so
highly, exhibited at the same time the last ex-
amples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause,
and cadence. His tragedies in rhyme, however
worthless in themselves, had at least served the
purpose of nonsense-verses : they had taught
him all the arts of melody which the heroic
couplet admits. For bombast, his prevailing
vice, his new subjects gave little opportunity ;
h. > better taste gradually discarded it.
LORD MACAULAY : John Dryden.
DUELLING.
Death is not sufficient to deter men who make
it their glory to despise it ; but if every one that
fought a duel were to stand in the pillory, it
would quickly lessen the number of these imagi-
nary men of honour, and put an end to so absurd
a practice.
When honour is a support to virtuous princi-
ples, and runs parallel with the laws of God and
our country, it cannot be too much cherished
and encouraged ; but when the dictates of hon-
our are contrary to those of religion and equity,
they are the greatest deprivations of human na-
ture, by giving wrong ambitions and false ideas
of what is good and laudable ; and should there-
fore be exploded by all governments, and driven
out as the bane and plague of human society.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 199.
The practice of the duel, as a private mode,
recognized only by custom, of deciding private
differences, seems to be of comparatively recent
date. BRANDE.
How ! a man's blood for an injurious, pas-
sionate speech for a disdainful look ? Nay,
that is not all : that thou mayest gain among
men the reputation of a discreet, well-tempered
murderer, be sure thou killest him not in pas-
sion, when thy blood is hot and boiling with the
provocation ; but proceed with as great temper
and settledness of reason, with as much discre-
tion and preparedness, as thou vvouldest to the
communion : after several- days' respite, that it
may appear it is thy reason guides thee, and not
thy passion, invite him kindly and courteously
into some retired place, and there let it be deter-
mined whether his blood or thine shall satisfy
the injury. CHILLINGWORTH : Sermons.
Duelling was then [1822], as now, an absurd
jn * shocking remedy for private insult.
LORD COCKBURN.
It is astonishing that the murderous practice
of duelling should continue so long in vogue.
FRANKLIN.
I shall therefore hereafter consider how the
bravest men in other ages and nations have
behaved themselves upon such incidents as we
decide by combat ; and showj from their prac-
tice, that this resentment neither has its founda-
tion from true reason or solid fame, but is an
imposture, made up of cowardice, falsehood, ana
want of understanding.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 25.
Shakspeare, in As You Like It, has rallied the
mode of formal duelling, then so prevalent, with
the highest humour and address.
BISHOP WARBURTON.
DULNESS.
The attempts, however, of dulness are con-
stantly repeated, and as constantly fail. For
the misfortune is, that the Head of Dulness,
zinlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of
her benumbing and lethargizing influence by
reiterated discharges : horses may ride over her,
and mules and asses may trample upon her, but,
with an exhaustless and a patient perversity, she
continues her narcotic operations even to the end.
COLTON : Lacon, Preface.
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to
be sure, at times ! A ground-glass shade over a
gas-lamp does not bring any more solace to our
dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds.
DR. O. W. HOLMES.
DURATION.
All the notion we have of duration is partly
by the successiveness of its own operations, and
partly by those external measures that it finds in
motion. SIR M. HALE.
That we have our notion of succession and
duration from this original, viz., from the reflec-
tion on the train of ideas which we find to ap-
pear one after another in our own minds, seems
plain to me, in that we have no perception of
duration but by considering the train of ideas
that take their turns in our understandings.
LOCKE.
One who fixes his thoughts intently on one
thing, so as to take but little notice of the suc-
cession of ideas in his mind, lets slip out of his
account a good part of that duration.
LOCKE.
When the succession of ideas cease, our pei
ception of duration ceases with it, which every
one experiments whilst he sleeps soundly.
LOCKE.
DUTY.
Nothing can make him remiss in the tractice
of his duty, no prospect of interest can allure
him, no danger dismay him. ATTERBURY.
No unkindness of a brother can wholly re-
scind that relation, or disoblige us from the
duties annexed thereto. BARROW
DUTY.
187
I think rnyseU obliged, whatever my private
apprehensions may be of the success, to do my
duty, and leave events to their disposer.
BOYLE.
Taking it for granted that I do not write to
the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may
assume that the awful Author of our being is
the Author of our place in the order of exist-
ence, and that having disposed and marshalled
us by a divine tactic, not according to our will,
but according to His, He has in and by that dis-
position virtually subjected us to act the part
which belongs to the place assigned us. We
have obligations to mankind at large, which are
not in consequence of any special voluntary pact.
They arise from the relation of man to man, and
the relation of man to God, which relations are
not matters of choice. On the contrary, the
force of all the pacts which we enter into with
any particular person or number of persons
amongst mankind depends upon those prior ob-
ligations. In some cases the subordinate rela-
tions are voluntary, in others they are necessary,
but the duties are. all compulsive.
BURKE: Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs, 1791.
When you choose an arduous and slippery
path, God forbid that any weak feelings of my
declining age, which calk for soothings and
supports, and which can have none but from you,
should make me wish that you should abandon
what you are about, or should trifle with it ! In
this house we submit, though with troubled
minds, to that order which has connected all
great duties with toils and with perils, which
has conducted the road to glory through the
regions of obloquy and reproach, and which
will never suffer the disparaging alliance of
spurious, false, and fugitive praise with genuine
and permanent reputation. We know that the
Power which has settled that order, and sub-
jected you to it by placing you in the situation
you are in, is able to bring you out of it with
credit and with safety. His will be done ! All
must come right. You may open the way with
'pain and under reproach : others will pursue it
with ease and with applause. BURKE:
Letter to Rich. Burke, on Protestant Ascend-
ency in Ireland, 1793.
Men love to hear of their power, but have an
extreme disrelish to be told their duty.
BURKE.
Conviction, were it never so excellent, is
worthless till it convert itself into conduct.
Nay, properly, conviction is not possible till
then ; inasmuch as all speculation is by nature
endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices : only
by a felt indubitable certainty of experience does
it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion
itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise
man teaches us, that " doubt of any sort cannot
be removed except by action." On which
ground, too, Jet him who gropes painfully in
darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehe-
mently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay
this other precept well to heart, which to me
was of invaluable service : " Do the duty which
lies nearest thee" which thou knowest to be a
duty! Thy second duty will already have be-
come clearer. CARLYLE.
There is not a moment without some duty.
CICERO.
The law of our constitution, whereby the regu-
lated activity of both intellect and feeling is made
essential to sound bodily health, seems to me one
of the most beautiful arrangements of an all-wise
and beneficent Creator. If we shun the society
of our fellow-creatures, and shrink from taking a
share in the active duties of life, mental indolence
and physical debility beset our path. Whereas, if
by engaging in the business of life, and taking an
active interest in the advancement of society,
we duly exercise our various powers of percep
tion, thought, and feeling, we promote the health
of the whole corporeal system, invigorate the
mind itself, and at the same time experience the
highest mental gratification of which a human
being is susceptible; namely, that of having ful-
filled the end and object of our being, in the
active discharge of our duties to God, to our
fellow-men, and to ourselves. If we neglect
our faculties, or deprive them of their objects,
we weaken the organization, give rise to dis-
tressing diseases, and at the same time experi-
ence the bitterest feelings that can afflict hu-
manity, ennui and melancholy. The harmony
thus shown to exist between the moral and phys-
ical world is but another example of the numer-
ous inducements to that right conduct and act-
ivity in pursuing which the Creator has evidently
destined us to find terrestrial happiness.
GEORGE COMBE.
It is an impressive truth that sometimes in
the very lowest forms of duty, less than which
would rank a man as a villain, there is, never-
theless, the sublimest ascent of self-sacrifice.
To do less would class you as an object of eter-
nal scorn ; to do so much presumes the grandeur
of heroism. DE QUINCEY.
What I must do is all that concerns me, and
not what the people think. This rule, equally
as arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may
serve for the whole distinction between greatness
and meanness. It is the harder, because you
will always find those who think they know
what is your duty better than you know it. It
is easy in the world to live after the world's
opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after your
own ; but the great man is he who in the midst
of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the
independence of solitude.
R. W. EMERSON.
Be not diverted from your duty by any idle
reflections the silly world may make upon you,
for their censures are not in your power, and
consequently should not be any part of youi
concern. EPICTETUS.
i88
DUTY.
We should accustom ourselves to make atten-
tion entirely the instrument of volition. Let the
will be determined by the conclusions of reason,
by deliberate conclusions, and then let atten-
tion be wielded by both. Think what is self-
government ; what is fittest to be done ought to
be now done, and let will be subordinate to rea-
son, and attention to will. In this way you will
always be disengaged for present duty. Pleas-
ures, amusements, inferior objects, will be easily
sacrificed to the most important. You may have
likings to inferior or trifling occupations; but if,
to use the strong language of Scripture, you
crucify these, oppose them, carry your intention
beyond them, their power to molest and mislead
you will decline. FERRIER.
Moral obligation, being the obligation of a
free agent, implies a law, and a law implies a
law-giver. The will of God, therefore, is the
true ground of all obligation, strictly and prop-
erly so called. FLEMING.
Of an accountable creature, duty is the con-
cern of every moment, since he is every moment
pleasing or displeasing God. It is a universal
element, mingling with every action and quali-
fying every disposition and pursuit. The moral
of conduct, as it serves both to ascertain and to
form the character, has consequences in a future
world so certain and infallible that it is repre-
sented in Scripture as a seed no part of which is
lost, for whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall
he reap. ROBERT HALL :
Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower Classes.
A good man is accustomed to acquiesce in the
:'idea of his duties as an ultimate object, without
inquiring at every step why he should perform
them, or amusing himself with imagining cases
and situations in which they would be liable to
limitations and exceptions.
ROBERT HALL :
Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis.
It is a matter of sound consequence, that all
duties are by so much the better performed by
how much the men are more religious from
whose habitudes the same proceed.
HOOKER.
Duty is far more than love. It is the up-
holding law through which the weakest become
strong, without which all strength is unstable as
water. No character, however harmoniously
framed and gloriously gifted, can be complete
without this abiding principle : it is the cement
which binds the whole moral edifice together,
without which all power, goodness, intellect,
truth, happiness, love itself, can have no perma-
nence ; but all the fabric of existence crumbles
away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting
in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own
desolation. MRS. JAMESON.
He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to
duty approaches sublimity. LAVATER.
If it is our glory and happiness to have a
rational nature, that is endued with wisdom and
reason, that is capable of imitating the divine
nature, then it must be our glory and happiness
to improve our reason and wisdom, to act up to
the excellency of our rational nature, and to
imitate God in all our actions, to the utmost of
our power. LAW.
All duties are matter of conscience ; with this
restriction, that a superior obligation suspends
the force of an inferior one.
L' ESTRANGE.
Every man has his station assigned him, and
in that station he is well, if he can but think
himself so. L' ESTRANGE.
There is not one grain in the universe . . ,
to be spared, nor so much as any one particle
of it that mankind may not be the better or the
worse for, according as 'tis applied.
L' ESTRANGE.
The consciousness of doing that which we are
reasonably persuaded we ought to do, is always
a gratifying sensation to the considerate mind :
it is a sensation by God's will inherent in our
nature; and is, as it were, the voice of God
Himself, intimating His approval of our con-
duct, and by His commendation encouraging
us to proceed. BISHOP MANT.
If we know ourselves, we shall remember the
condescension, benignity, and love that is due
to inferiors ; the affability, friendship, and kind-
ness we ought to show to equals ; the regard,
deference, and honour we owe to superiors;
and the candour, integrity, and benevolence
we owe to all. W. MASON.
There is a certain scale of duties . . . which
for want of studying in right order, all the world
is in confusion. MILTON.
We ought to profess our dependence upon
him, and our obligations to him for the good
things we enjoy. We ought to publish to the
world our sense of his goodness with the voice
of praise, and tell of all his wondrous works.
We ought to comfort his servants and children
in their afflictions, and relieve his poor distressed
members in their manifold necessities; for he
that giveth alms sacrificeth praise.
ROBERT NELSON.
No man's spirits were ever hurt by doing his
duty: on the contrary, one good action, 0112
temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice
of desire or interest purely for conscience's sake,
will prove a cordial for weak and low spirits far
beyond what either indulgence, or diversion, or
company can do for them. PALEY.
The great business of a man is to improve his
mind'and govern his manners ; all other projects
and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or
not, are only amusements. PLINY.
I will suppose that you have no friends to
share or rejoice in your success in life, that you
cannot look back to those to whom you owe
gratitude, or forward to those to whom you
DUTY.
189
ought to afford protection ; but it is no less in-
cumbent on you to move steadily in the path of
duty ; for your active exertions are clue not only
to society, but in humble gratitude to the Being
who made you a member of it, with powers to
serve yourself and others.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
All mankind acknowledge themselves able
and sufficient to do many things which actually
they never do. SOUTH.
Many secret indispositions and aversions to
duty will steal upon the soul, and it will require
both time and close application of mind to re-
cover it to such a frame as shall dispose it for
the spiritualities of religion. SOUTH.
There is no such way of giving God the glory
of his infinite knowledge as by an obediential
practice of- those duties and commands which
seem most to thwart and contradict our own.
SOUTH.
Those plain and legible lines of duty requir-
ing us to demean ourselves to God humbly and
devoutly, to our governors obediently, to our
neighbours justly, and to ourselves soberly and
temperately. SOUTH.
Doing is expressly commanded, and no hap-
piness allowed to anything short of it.
SOUTH.
Questionless, duty moves not so much upon
command as promise : now, that which proposes
the greatest and most suitable rewards to obedi-
ence, and the greatest punishments to disobedi-
ence, doubtless is the most likely to enforce the
one and prevent the other. SOUTH.
He who endeavours to know his duty, and
practises what he knows, has the equity of God
to stand as a mighty wall or rampart between
him and damnation for any infirmities.
SOUTH.
Whatever you dislike in another person take
care to correct in yourself. SPRAT.
A wise man who does not assist with his
counsels, a rich man with his charity, and a poor
nan with his labour, are perfect nuisances in a
commonwealth. SWIFT.
We are not solicitous of the opinion and cen-
tures of men, but only that we do our duty.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
All our duty is set down in our prayers, be-
cause ir all our duty we beg the divine assistance,
and remember that you are bound to do all those
duties for the doing of which you have prayed
for the divine assistance.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
Nor provided our duty be secured, for the
degrees and instruments every man is permitted
to himself. JEREMY TAYLOR,
The gospel chargeth us with piety towardf
God, and justice and charity to men, and tem-
perance and chastity in reference to ourselves.
TILLOTSON.
These two must make our duty very easy : a
considerable reward in hand, and the assurance
of a far greater recompense hereafter.
TILLOTSON.
What a calming, elevating, solemnizing view
of the tasks which we find ourselves set in this
world to do, this word [vocation] would give
us, if we did but realize it to the full !
R. C. TREN-CH.
Religion or virtue, in a large sense, includes
duty to God and our neighbour; but, in a
proper sense, virtue signifies duty towards men,
and religion duty to God. DR. I. WATTS.
To pursue and persevere in virtue, with regard
to themselves ; in justice and goodness, with
regard to their neighbours; and piety towarda
God. DR. I. WATTS.
Knowledge of our duties is the most usefu)
part of philosophy. WHATELY.
Every man has obligations which belong to
his station. Duties extend beyond obligations,
and direct the affections, desires, and intentions,
as well as the actions. WHEWELL.
What it is our duty to do we must do because
it is right, not because any one can demand it
of us. WHEWELL.
That we ought to do an action, is of itself a
sufficient and ultimate answer to the questions,
Why we should do it? how we are obliged
to do it? The conviction of duty implies the
soundest reason, the strongest obligation, of
which our nature is susceptible.
WHEWELL.
Nothing is properly his duty but wh;ii U
really his interest. BISHOP WiLKiNS.
190
EARLY RISING. EARTH.
EARLY RISING.
I would have inscribed on the curtains of
your bed, and the walls of your chamber, " If
you do net rise early, you can make progress in
nothing." If you do not set apart your hours
of reading; if ym suffer yourself or any one
else to break in upon them, your days will slip
through your hands unprofitable and frivolous,
and unenjoyed by yourself.
LORD CHATHAM.
Six, or at most seven, hours' sleep is, for a
constancy, as much as you or anybody can
want : more is only laziness and dozing; and is,
I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefy-
ing. ... I have very often gone to bed at six
in the morning, and rose, notwithstanding, at
eight ; by which means I got many hours in the
morning that my companions lost; and the
want of sleep obliged me to keep good hours
the next, or at least the third night. To this
method I owe the greatest part of my reading ;
for from twenty to forty I should certainly have
lead very little if I had not been up while my
acquaintances were in bed. Know the true
value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every
moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no
procrastination : never put off till to-morrow
what you can do to-day.
LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, Dec. 26, 1749.
The difference between rising at five and
seven o'clock in the morning, for the space of
forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the
same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the
addition of ten years to a man's life.
DODDRIDGE.
He that from his childhood has made rising
betimes familiar to him will not waste the best
part of his life in drowsiness and lying a-bed.
LOCKE.
Whoever has tasted the breath of morning,
knows that the most invigorating and most de-
lightful hours of the day are commonly spent
in bed ; though it is the evident intention of
nature that we should enjoy and profit by them.
Children awake early, and would be up and
stirring long before the arrangements of the
family permit them to use their limbs. We are
thus broken in from childhood to an injurious
habit : that habit might be shaken off with more
ease than it was first imposed. We rise with
the sun at Christmas ; it were continuing so to
do till the middle of April, and without any
perceptible change we should find ourselves
then rising at five o'clock, till which hour we
might continue till September, and then accom-
modate ourselves again to the change of season.
SOUTH EY.
When 1 find myself awakened into being, and
perceive my life renewed within me, and at the
same time see the whole face of nature recov-
ered out of the dark uncomfortable state in
which it lay for several hours, my heart over-
flows with such secret sentiments of joy and
gratitude, as are a kind of implicit praise to the
great Author of Nature. The mind, in these
early reasons of the day, is so refreshed in all
its faculties, and borne up with such new sup-
plies of animal spirits, that she finds herself in.
a state of youth, especially when she is enter-
tained with the breath of flowers, the melody
of birds, the dews that hang upon the plants,
and all those other sweets of nature that are
peculiar to the morning.
It is impossible for a man to have this relish
of being, this exquisite taste of life, who does
not come into the world before it is in all its
noise and hurry; who loses the rising of the
sun, the still hours of the day, and, immediately
upon his first getting up, plunges himself into
the ordinary cares or follies of the world.
SIR R. STEELE : Tatler, No. 263.
Few ever lived to a great age, and fewer still
ever became distinguished, who were not in the
habit of early rising. You rise late, and, of
course, commence your business at a late hour,
and everything goes wrong all day. Franklin
says that he who rises late may trot all day,
and not have overtaken his business at night.
Dean Swift avers that he never knew any man
come to greatness and eminence who lay in bed
of a morning. DR. J. TODD.
EARTH.
The earth on which we tread was evidently
intended by the Creator to support man and
other animals, along with their habitations, and
to furnish those vegetable productions which
are necessary for their subsistence ; and, accord-
ingly, He has given it that exact degree of con.
sistency which is requisite for these purposes.
Were it much harder than it now is; were it,
for example, as dense as a rock, it would be
incapable of cultivation, and vegetables could
not be produced from its surface. Were it
softer, it would be insufficient to support us, and
we should sink at every step, like a person
walking in a quagmire. The exact adjustment
of the solid parts of our globe to the nature
and necessities of the beings which inhabit it,
is an instance of divine wisdom.
DR. T. DICK.
It is this earth that, like a kind mother, re-
ceives us at our birth, and sustains us when
born ; it is this alone of all the elements around
us that is never found an enemy to man. The
body of waters deluge him with rain, oppress
him with hail, and drown him with inundations;
the air rushes in storms, prepares the tempest, or
lights up the volcano; but the earth, gentle and
indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man,
spreads his walks with flowers and his table
with plenty; returns with interest every good
committed "to her care, and though she produces
the poison, she still supplies the antidote ; though
constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of
man than his necessities, yet even to the last
EAST INDIA COMPANY.
191
she continues her kind indulgence, and when
life is over, she piously covers his remains in her
bosom. PLINY.
EAST INDIA COMPANY.
With regard, therefore, to the abuse of the
external federal trust, I engage myself to you to
make good these three positions. First, 1 say,
that from Mount Imaus (or whatever else you
call that large range of mountains that walls the
northern frontier of India), where it touches us
in the latitude of twenty-nine, to Cape Comorin,
in the latitude of eight, that there is not a single
prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in
India, with whom they have come into contact,
whom they have not sold : I say sold, though
sometimes they have not been able to deliver
according to their bargain. Secondly, I say, that
there is not a single treaty they have ever made
which they have not broken. Thirdly, I say,
that there is not a single prince or state, who
ever put any trust in the Company, who is not
utterly ruined ; and that none are in any degree
secure or flourishing, but in the exact propor-
tion to their settled distrust and irreconcilable
enmity to this nation. BURKE:
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill,
Dec. I, 1783.
The invariable course of the Company's policy
is this : either they set up some prince too odious
to maintain himself without the necessity of
their assistance, or they soon render him odious
by making him the instrument of their govern-
ment. In that case troops are bountifully sent
to him to maintain his authority. That he
should have no want of assistance, a civil gen-
tleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court,
who, under pretence of providing duly for the
pay of these troops, gets assignments on the
revenue into his hands. Under his provident
management, debts soon accumulate; new as-
signments are made for these debts; until, step
by step, the whole revenue, and with it the
whole power of the country, is delivered into
his hands. The military do not behold without
a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the
civil department. They feel that in a country
driven to habitual rebellion by the civil govern-
ment the military is necessary; and they will
not permit their services to go unrewarded.
Tracts of country are delivered over to their
discretion. Then it is found proper to convert
their commanding officers into farmers of reve-
nue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and
well-rewarded military establishment, the situa-
tion of the natives may be easily conjectured.
The authority of the regular and lawful govern-
ment is everywhere and in every point extin-
guished. Disorders and violences arise ; they
are repressed by other disorders and other vio-
lences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue
and the farming colonels and majors move, ruin
is about them, rebellion before and behind them.
The people in crowds fly out of the country ;
and the frontier is guarded by lines of troops,
not to exclude an enemy, but to prevent the
escape of the inhabitants. BURKE:
Speech on Mr. Fox's hast India Bill,
Dec. I, 1783.
These intended rebellions are one of the
Company's standing resources. When money
has been thought to be heaped up anywhere,
its owners are universally accused of rebellion,
until they are acquitted of their money and their
treasons at once. The money once taken, all
accusation, trial, and punishment ends. It is so
settled a resource, that I rather wonder how it
comes to be omitted in the Directors' account;
but I take it for granted this omission will be
supplied in their next edition.
The Company stretched this resource to the
full extent when they accused two old women
in the remotest corner of India (who could
have no possible view or motive to raise dis-
turbances) of being engaged in rebellion, with
an intent to drive out the English nation, in
whose protection, purchased by money and
secured by treaty, rested the sole hope of their
existence. But the Company wanted money,
and the old women must be guilty of a plot.
They were accused of rebellion, and they were
convicted of wealth. Twice had great sums
been extorted from them, and as often had the
British faith guaranteed the remainder. A body
of British troops, with one of the military farm-
ers-general at their head, was sent to seize upon
the castle in which these helpless women re-
sided. Their chief eunuchs, who were their
agents, their guardians, protectors, persons of
high rank according to the Eastern manners,
and of great trust, were thrown into dungeons,
to make them discover their hidden treasures,
and there they lie at present. The lands
assigned for the maintenance of the women
were seized and confiscated. Their jewels and
effects were taken, and set up to a pretended
auction in an obscure place, and bought at such
a price as the gentlemen thought proper to give.
No account has ever been transmitted of the
articles or produce of this sale. What money
was obtained is unknown, or what terms were
stipulated for the maintenance of these despoiled
and forlorn creatures ; for by some particulars u
appears as if an engagement of the kind was
made. BURKE:
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill,
"Dec. I, 1783.
It is only to complete the view I proposed of
the conduct of the Company with regard to the
dependent provinces, that 1 shall say any thing
at all of the Carnatic, which is the scene, if pos-
sible, of greater disorder than the northern prov-
inces. Perhaps it were better to say of this
centre and metropolis of abuse, whence all the
rest in India and in England diverge, from
whence they are fed and methodized, what was
said of Carthage, " De Carthagine satins est
silere quatii parnni die<ere." This country, in
all its denominations, is about 46,000 square
miles. It may be affirmed, universally, that not
one person of substance or property, landed,
192
EAST INDIA COMPANY. ECONOMY.
commercial, or moneyed, excepting two or three
bankers, who are necessary deposits and distrib-
utors of the general spoil, is left in all that re-
gion. In that country, the moisture, the bounty
of Heaven, is given but at a certain season. Be-
fore the era of our influence, the industry of
man carefully husbanded that gift of God. The
Gentoos preserved, with a provident and re-
ligious care, the precious deposit of the period-
ical rain in reservoirs, many of them works of
royal grandeur ; and from these, as occasion de-
manded, they fructified the whole country. To
maintain these reservoirs, and to keep up an
annual advance to the cultivators for seed and
cattle, formed a principal object of the piety and
policy of the priests and rulers of the Gentoo
religion. BURKE:
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill,
Dec. I, 1783.
The menial servants of Englishmen, persons
(to use the emphatical phrase of a ruined and
patient Eastern chief) " whose fathers they would
not have set with the dogs of their flock", entered
into their patrimonial lands. Mr. Hastings's
banian was, after this auction, found possessed
of territories yielding a rent of one hundred and
forty thousand pounds a year.
Such an universal proscription, upon any pre-
tence, has few examples. Such a proscription,
without even a pretence of delinquency, has
none. It stands by itself. It stands as a mon-
ument to astonish the imagination, to confound
the reason of mankind. I confess to you, when
I first came to know this business in its true na-
ture and extent, my surprise did a little suspend
my indignation. I was in a manner stupefied
by the desperate boldness of a few obscure young
men, who, having obtained, by ways which they
could not comprehend, a power of which they
saw neither the purposes nor the limits, tossed
about, subverted, and tore to pieces, as if it were
in the gambols of a boyish unluckiness and
malice, the most established rights, and the most
ancient and revered institutions, of ages and
nations. BURKE :
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill,
Dec. I, 1783.
Whilst the Directors were digesting their as-
tonishment at this information, a memorial was
presented to them from three gentlemen, in-
forming them that their friends had lent, likewise,
to merchants of Canton in China, a sum of not
more than one million sterling. In this memo-
rial they called upon the Company for their
assistance and interposition with the Chinese
government for the recovery of the debt. This
sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twenty-four
per cent., which would yield, if paid, an annuity
of two hundred and forty thousand pounds.
Perplexed as the Directors were with these
demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did
not find themselves much disembarrassed by
being made acquainted that they must again
exert their influence for a new reserve of the
happy parsimony of their servants, collected into
a second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amount-
ing to two millions four hundred thousand
pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent.
BURKE:
Speech on the Nabob of Arcofs Debts t
Feb. 28, 1785.
Against misgovernment such as then afflicted
Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The su-
perior intelligence and eneigy of the dorriinant
class made their power irresistible. A war of
Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war
of sheep against wolves, of men against demons.
The only protection which the conquered could
find was in the moderation, the clemency, the
enlarged policy of the conquerors. That pro-
tection, at a later period, they found. But at first
English power came among them unaccompa-
nied by English morality. There was an inter-
val between the time at which they became our
subjects and the time at which we began to
reflect that we were bound to discharge towards
them the duties of rulers. Luring that interval
the business of a servant of the Company v/as
simply to wring out of the natives a hundred
or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as
possible, that he might return home before his
constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry
a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in
Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square.
LORD MACAU LAY :
Warren Hastings, Oct. 1841.
ECONOMY.
The man who will live above his present cir-
cumstances is in great danger of living, in a
little time, much beneath them. ADDISON.
Certainly, if a man will keep but of even
hand, his ordinary expenses ought to be but to
the half of his receipts ; and if he think to wax
rich, but to the third part. It is no baseness foi
the greatest to descend and look into their own
estate. Some forbear it, not upon negligence
alone, but doubting to bring themselves into
melancholy, in respect they shall find it broken :
but wounds cannot be cured without searching.
He that cannot look into his own estate at all
had need both choose well those whom he em-
ployeth, and change them often; for new are
more timorous and less subtle. He that can
look into his estate but seldom, it behoveth him
to turn all to certainties. A man had need, if
he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to be
as saving again in some other: as if he be plenti-
ful in diet, to be saving in apparel ; if he be plen-
tiful in the hall, to be saving in the stable and
the like: for he that is plentiful in expenses of
all kinds will hardly be preserved from decay.
LORD BACON :
Essay XXIX., Of Expense.
It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave
to tell him that mere parsimony is not economy.
It is separable in theory from it; and in fact it
may or it may not be a/^r/of economy, accord-
ing to circumstances. Expense, and great ex-
ECONOMY. EDUCA TION.
'93
pense, may be an essential part in true economy.
If parsimony were to be considered as one of
the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, an-
other and an higher economy. Economy is a
distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving,
but in selection. Parsimony requires no provi-
dence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no
comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and
that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may
produce this false economy in perfection. The
other economy has larger views. It demands a
discriminating judgment, and a firm, sagacious
mind. It shuts one door to impudent impor-
tunity, only to open another, and a wider, to
uripresuming merit. If none but meritorious
service or real talent were to be rewarded, this
nation has not wanted, and this nation will not
want, the means of rewarding all the service it
ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit
it ever will produce. No slate, since the foun-
dation of society, has been impoverished by
that species of profusion. BURKE:
Letters to a Noble Lord, 1796.
Beware of little expenses; a small leak will
sink a great ship. B. FRANKLIN.
As boys should be educated with temperance,
so the first greatest lesson that should be taught
them is to admire frugality. It is by the exer-
cise of this virtue alone they can ever expect to
be useful members of society. It is true, lec-
tures continually repeated upon this subject, may
make some boys, when they grow up, run into
an extreme, and become misers ; but it were
well had we more misers than we have amongst
us. GOLDSMITH : Essays, No. VII.
It is no small commendation to manage a lit-
tle well. lie is a good wagoner that can turn
in a little room. To live well in abundance is
the praise of the estate, not of the person. I
will study more how to give a good account of
my little, than how to make it more.
BISHOP J. HALL.
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty,
and of ease ; and the beauteous sister of tem-
perance, of cheerfulness, and health; and pro-
fuseness is a cruel and crafty demon that gradu-
ally involves her followers in dependence and
debts ; that is, fetters them with " irons that
enter into their souls." DR. S. JOHNSON.
Frugality maybe termed 'the daughter of pru-
dence, the sister of temperance, and the parent
of liberty. He that is extravagant will quickly
become poor, and poverty will enforce depend-
ence and invite corruption.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever
principle, ought to think themselves obliged to
learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious an-
cestors, and attain the salutary arts of contract-
ing expense ; for withotit economy none can be
rich, and with it few can be poor. The mere
power of saving what is already in our hands
must be of easy acquisition to every mind ; and
as the example of Lord Bacon may show that
the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a
thousand instance? every day prove that th
humblest may practise it with success.
DR. S. JOHNSON.
EDUCATION.
I consider a human soul without education
like marble in the quarry, which shows none of
its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher
fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine,
and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and
vein that runs through the body of it. Educa-
tion, after the same manner, when it works upon
a noble mind, draws out to view every latent
virtue and perfection, which without such helps
are never able to make their appearance.
If my reader will give me leave to change the
allusion so soon upon him, I shall make use of
the same instance to illustrate the force of edu
cation, which Aristotle has brought to explain
his doctrine of substantial forms, when he tells
us that a statue lies hid in a block of marble,
and that the art of the statuary, only clears away
the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish.
The figure is in st.one, the sculptor only finds it.
What sculpture is to a block of marble, educa-
tion is to a human soul. The philosopher, the
saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the
great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a
plebeian, which a proper education might hav
disinterred, and have brought to light.
ADDISON: Spectator, No. 215.
As I believe the English universities are the
best places in the world for those who can profit
by them, so I think for the idle and self-indul-
gent they are about the very worst.
DR. T. ARNOLD.
The force of education is so great, that we
may mould the minds and manners of the young
into what shape we please, and give them the
impressions of such habits as shall 4 ever after
remain. ATTERBURY.
The fruits of the earth do not more obviously
require labour and cultivation to prepare them
for our use and subsistence, than our faculties
demand instruction and regulation in order to
qualify us to become upright and valuable mem-
bers of society, useful to others, or happy in our-
selves. BARROW.
There have been periods when the country,
heard with dismay that " The soldier was
abroad." That is not the case now. Let the
soldier be abroad : in the present age he can do
nothing. There is another person abroad, a
less important person in the eyes of some, an
insignificant person, whose labours have tended
to produce this state of things. The school-
master is abroad ! And I trust more to him,
armed with his primer, than I do the soldier in
full military array, for upholding and extending
the liberties of his country.
LORD BROUGHAM :
Speech in House of Commons, Jan. 29, I 28
194
EDUCATION.
How different from this manner of education
is that which prevails in our own country, where
nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty
boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinatit ns,
ranged together in the same class, employed
upon the same authors, and enjoined the same
tasks ! Whatever their natural genius may be,
they are all to be made poets, historians, and
orators alike. They are all obliged to have the
same capacity, to bring in the same tale of verse,
and to furnish out the same amount of prose.
Everybody is bound to have as good a memory
as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead
of adapting studies to the particular genius of a
youih, we expect from the young man that he
should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I
must confess, is not so much to be imputed to
the instructor, as to the parent, who will never
be brought to believe that his son is not capable
of performing as much as his neighbour's, and
that he may not make him whatever he has a
mind to. BUDGELL : Spectator, No. 307.
In short, a private education seems the most
natural method for the forming of a virtuous
man; a public education for making a man of
business. The first would furnish out a good
subject for Plato's republic, the latter a member
for a community overrun with artifice and cor-
ruption. BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 313.
In short, nothing is more wanting to our pub-
lic schools than that the masters of them should
use the same care in fashioning the manners of
their scholars as in forming their tongues to
the learned languages. Wherever the former
is omitted, I cannot help agreeing with Mr.
Locke, that a man must have a very strange
value for words, when, preferring the languages
of the Greeks and Romans to that which made
them such brave men, he can think it worth
while to hazard the innocence and virtue of his
son for a little Greek and Latin.
BUDGELL : Spectator, No. 337.
What is the education of the generality of the
world? Reading a parcel of books? No. Re-
straint of discipline, emulation, examples of
virtue and of justice, form the education of the
World. BURKE.
I too acknowledge the all but omnipotence
of early culture and nurture ; hereby we have
either a doddered dwarf bush or a high-tower-
ing, wide-spreading tree ! either a sick yellow
cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of
"a truth it is the duty of all men, especially of all
philosophers, to note down with accuracy the
characteristic circumstances of their education,
what furthered, what hindered, what in any
way modified it. CARLYLE.
Whose school-hours are all the days and
nights of our existence. CARLYLE.
I have no sympathy whatever with those who
would grudge our workmen and our common
people the very highest acquisitions which their
taste, or their time, or their inclinations, would
lead them to realize; for next to the salvation
of their souls, I certainly say that the object of
my fondest aspirations is the moral and intel-
lectual, and, as a sure consequence of this, the
economical, advancement of the working classes,
the one object which of all others in the wide
range of political speculation is the one which
should be the dearest to the heart of every
philanthropist and every patriot.
DR. T. CHALMERS.
It requires, also, a great deal of exercise to
bring it [the mind] to a state of health and
vigour. Observe the difference there is between
minds cultivated and minds uncultivated, and
you will, I am sure, think that you cannot take
too much pains, nor employ too much of your
time, in the culture of your own. A drayman
is probably born with as good organs as Milton,
Locke, or Newton ; but, by culture, they are
much more before him than he is above his
horse. Sometimes, indeed, extraordinary ge-
niuses have broken out by the force of nature,
without the assistance of education ; but those
instances are too rare for anybody to trust to ;
and even they would make a much better figure
if they had the advantage of education into the
bargain. LORD CHESTERFIELD :
Letters to his Son, April I, 1748.
Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a
child's mind by inculcating any opinions before
it had come to years of discretion to choose for
itself. I showed him my garden, and told him
it was my botanical garden. "How so?" said
he; "it is covered with weeds." " Oh," I re-
plied, " that is only because it has not yet
come to its age of discretion and choice. The
weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow,
and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the
soil towards roses and strawberries."
COLERIDGE.
Who would be at the trouble of learning,
when he finds his ignorance is caressed ? But
when you browbeat and maul them you make
them men : for though they have no natural
mettle, yet if they are spurred and kicked they
will mend their pace. JEREMY COLLIER.
In one of the notes to a former publication I
have quoted an old writer, who observes that
" we fatten a sheep with grass, not in order to
obtain- a crop of hay from his back, but in the
hope that he will feed us with mutton and
clothe us with wool." We may apply this to the
sciences : we teach a young man algebra, the
mathematics, and logic, not that he should take
his equations and his parallelograms into West-
minster Hall, and bring his ten predicaments
to the House of Commons, but that he should
bring a mind to both these places so well stored
with the sound principles of truth and reason
as not to be deceived by the chicanery of the
bar nor the sophistry of the senate. The acquire-
ments of science may be termed the armour of
the mind; but that armour would be worse than
useless, that cost us all we had, and left us no*
thing to defend. COLTON : Lacon,
EDUCATION.
That man is but of the lower part of the
world that is not brought up to business and
affairs. FELLTHAM.
In some who have run up to men without
education we may observe many great qualities
darkened and eclipsed: their minds are crusted
over, like diamonds in the rock. FELTON.
A very important principle in education.
never to confine children long to any one occu-
pation or place. It is totally against their nature,
^s indicated in all their voluntary exercises.
JOHN FOSTER: Journal
Interesting conversation with Mr. S. on edu-
cation. Astonishment and grief at the folly,
especially in times like the present, of those
parents who totally forget, in the formation of
their children's habits, to inspire that vigorous
independence which acknowledges the smallest
possible number of wants, and so avoids or
triumphs over the negation of a thousand in-
dulgences, by always having been taught and
accustomed to do without them. " How many
things," said Socrates, " I do not want !"
JOHN FOSTER : Joiirnal.
Our common education is not intended to
render us good and wise, but learned : it hath
not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and
prudence, but hath imprinted in us their deri-
vation and etymology; it hath chosen out for
us not such books as contain the soundest and
truest opinions, but those that speak the best
Greek and Latin; and by these rules has in-
stilled into our fancy the vainest humours of
antiquity. But a good education alters the judg-
ment and manners. . . . 'Tis a silly conceit that
men without languages are also without under-
standing. It's apparent, in all ages, that some
such have been even prodigies for ability : for
it's not to be believed that wisdom speaks to
her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
THOMAS FULLER :
The Holy and The Profane State.
Every man who rises above the common level
receives two educations : the first from his in-
structors ; the second, the most personal and
important, from himself.
GIBBON : Miscellaneous Works.
A boy will learn more true wisdom in a public
school in a year, than by a private education in
five. It is not from masters, but from their
equals, youth learn a knowledge of the world :
the little tricks they play each other, the pun-
ishment that frequently attends the commission,
is a just picture of the great world; and all the
ways of men are practised in a public school in
miniature. It is true, a child is early made
acquainted with some vices in a school ; but it is
better to know these when a boy, than be first
taught them when a man ; for their novelty
then may have irresistible charms.
GOLDSMITH : Essays, No. VII.
Until a more Christian spirit pervades the
world, we are inclined to think that the s udy
of the classics is, on the whole, advantageous to
public morals, by inspiring an elegance of senti-
ment and an elevation of soul which we should
in vain seek for elsewhere.
ROBERT HALL: Review of Foster's Essays.
Some have objected to the instruction of the
lower classes from an apprehension that it would
lift them above their sphere, make them dissatis-
fied with their station in life, and, by impairing
the habits of subordination, endanger the tran-
quillity of the state; an objection devoid surely
of all force and validity. It is not easy to con-
ceive in what manner instructing men in their
duties can prompt them to neglect those duties, or
how that enlargement of reason which enables
them to comprehend the true grounds of au-
thority and the obligation to obedience should
indispose them to obey. The admirable mech-
anism of society, together with that subordina-
tion of ranks which is essential to its subsistence,
is surely not an elaborate imposture which the
exercise of reason will detect and expose. The
objection we have stated implies a reflection on
the social order, equally impolitic, invidious,
and unjust. Nothing in reality renders legiti-
mate governments so insecure as extreme ig-
norance in the people. It is this which yields
them an easy prey to seduction, makes them the
victims of prejudices and false alarms, and so
ferocious withal that their interference in a time
of public commotion is more to be dreaded than
the eruption of a volcano.
ROBERT HALL :
Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower
Classes.
I am persuaded that the extreme profligacy,
improvidence, and misery which are so preva-
lent among the labouring classes in many coun-
tries are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of
education. In proof of this, we need only cast
our eyes on the condition of the Irish compared
with that of the peasantry of Scotland.
ROBERT HALL :
Advantages of Knowledge to {he Lower
Classes.
Education and instruction are the means, the
one by use, the other by precept, to make our
natural faculty of reason both the better and the
sooner to judge rightly between truth and error,
good and evil. HOOKER.
A girl may be shown how to darn and how
to patch, how to bake and how to brew, how to
scrub and how to rub, how to buy penny-worths
with pennies, and yet be sent out to the rich
man a defective servant, and to the poor man
an unthrifty uncomfortable wife. On the othei
hand, she may have received formal instruction
in no one of these things, and yet be able to
overcome every difficulty as it arises, by help of
the spirit that has been put into her, and will
not only soon do well, but will perpetually ad-
vance towards perfection in whatever ministry
may be demanded of her by the circumstances
of her future life. If she has been ti dined tq
live by How and Why, always pcuring dowtt
196
EDUCATION.
through these conductors, the whole energy of
the mind upon the matter actually in hand, she
will surely make a wise wife or a clever servant.
Household Words.
We do not believe in great stupidity as a
common natural gift. Doubtless, it sometimes
is so; but, as seen among grown-up people, it
is often artificial. The bad teacher complains
of the pupil. There is a well-known instance
of a girl who, at fifteen, was thought so stupid
that her father despairingly abandoned the at-
tempt to educate her. This girl was Elizabeth
Carter, who lived to be, perhaps, the most learned
woman that England has ever produced.
Household Words.
The general mistake among us in the edu-
cating our children is, that in our daughters we
take care of their persons and neglect their
minds ; in our sons we are so intent upon adorn-
ing their minds that we wholly neglect their
bodies. It is from this that you shall see a
young lady celebrated and admired in all the
assemblies about town, when her elder brother
is afraid to come into a room. From this ill-
management it arises that we frequently observe
a man's life is half spent before he is taken no-
tice of; and a woman in the prime of her years
is out of fashion and neglected.
HUGHES : Spectator, No. 66.
There is a branch of useful training which
cannot be too heedfully regarded : I mean the
education that children give themselves. Their
observation is ever alive and awake to the cir-
cumstances which pass around them ; and from
the circumstances thus observed they are con-
tinually drawing their own conclusions. These
observations and conclusions have a powerful
influence in forming the character of youth.
What is imparted in the way of direct instruc-
tion they are apt to consider as official ; they
receive it often with downright suspicion ; gen-
erally, perhaps, with a sort of undefined qualifi-
cation and reserve. It is otherwise with what
children discover for themselves. As matter of
self-acquisition, this is treasured up, and reasoned
upon ; it penetrates the mind, and influences the
conduct, beyond all the formal lectures that ever
were delivered. Whether it be for good, or
whether it be for evil, the education of the child
is principally derived from its own observation
of the actions, the words, the voice, the looks, of
those with whom it lives. The fact is unques-
tionably so ; and since the fact is so, it is impos-
sible, surely, that the friends of youth can be too
circumspect in the youthful presence to avoid
every (and the least appearance of) evil. This
great moral truth was keenly felt, and powerfully
inculcated, even in the heathen world. But the
reverence for youth of Christian parents ought
to reach immeasurably further. It is not enough
that they set no bad example : it is indispensable
that they show forth a good one. It is not
enough that they seem virtuous : it is indispen-
sable that they be so. BISHOP JEBB.
Very few men are wise by their own counsel,
or learned by their own teaching; for lie thai
was only taught by himself had a fool to his
master. BEN JONSON.
I think we may assert that in a hundred men
there are more than ninety who are what they
are, good or bad, useful or pernicious to society,
from the instruction they have received. It is
on education that depend the great differences
observable among them. The least and most
imperceptible impressions received in our in-
fancy have consequences very important, and of
a long duration. It is with these first impres-
sions as with a river, whose waters we can
easily turn, by different canals, in quite opposite
courses ; so that from the insensible direction
the stream receives at its source, it takes differ-
ent directions, and at last arrives at places far
distant from each other; and with the same
facility we may, I think, turn the minds of chil-
dren to what direction we please.
LOCKE.
In learning anything, as little should be pro-
posed to the mind at once as is possible ; and
that being understood and fully mastered, pro-
ceed to the next adjoining, yet unknown, simple,
unperplexed proposition belonging to the matter
in hand, and tending to the clearing what is
principally designed. LOCKE.
Could it be believed that a child should t>c
forced to learn the rudiments of a language
which he is never to use, and neglect the writing
a good hand, and casting accounts?
LOCKE.
Virtue and talents, though allowed their due
consideration, yet are not enough to procure a
man a welcome wherever he comes. Nobody
contents himself with rough diamonds, or wears
them so. When polished and set, then they
give a lustre. LOCKE.
In education, most time is to be bestowed on
that which is of the greatest consequence in the
ordinary course and occurrences of that life the
young man is designed for. LOCKE.
A child will learn three times as fast when
he is in tune, as he will when he is dragged to
his task. LOCKE.
The mischiefs that come by inadvertency or
ignorance are but very gently to be taken notice
of. LOCKE.
To rmke the sense of esteem or disgrace sink
the deeper, and be of the more weight, either
agreeable or disagreeable things should con-
stantly accompany these different states.
LOCKE.
Education begins the gentleman ; but reading,
good company, and reflection must finish him.
LOCKF.
It is proposed that for every vacancy in the
civil service four candidates shall be named;
and the best candidate selected by examination.
EDUCATION.
We conceive that under this system the persons
sent out will be young men above par, young
men superior either in talents or in diligence to
the mass. It is said, I know, that examinations
in Latin, in Greek, and in mathematics are no
tests of what men will prove to be in life. I
sun perfectly aware that they are not infallible
tests; but that they are tests I confidently main-
tain. Look at every walk of life, at this house,
at the other house, at the Bar, at the Bench, at the
Church, and see whether it be not true that those
who attain high distinction in the world were
generally men who were distinguished in their
academic career. Indeed, Sir, this objection
would prove far too much even for those who
use it. It would prove that there is no use at
*11 in education. Why should we put boys out
of their way ? Why should we force a lad who
would much rather fly a kite or trundle a hoop
to learn his Latin Grammar? Why should we
keep a young man to his Thucydides or his
Laplace when he would much rather be shoot-
ing ? Education would be mere useless torture
if at two or three and twenty a man who had
neglected his studies were exactly on a par with
a man who had applied himself to them, ex-
actly as likely to perform all the offices of public
life with credit to himself and with advantage
to society. Whether the English system of
education be good or bad is not now the ques-
tion. Perhaps I may think that too much time
is given to the ancient languages and to the
abstract sciences. But what then ? Whatever
be the languages, whatever be the sciences,
which it is in any age or country the fashion to
teach, the persons who become the greatest
proficients in those languages and those sciences
will generally be the flower of the youth, the
most acute, the most industrious, the most am-
bitious of honourable distinctions. If the Ptole-
maic system were taught at Cambridge instead
of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would
nevertheless be in general a superior man to
the wooden spoon. If instead of learning Greek
we learned the Cherokee, the man who under-
stood the Cherokee best, who made the most
correct and melodious Cherokee verses, who
comprehended most accurately the effect of the
Cherokee particles, would generally be a supe-
rior man to him who was destitute of these
accomplishments. If astrology were taught at
our Universities, the young man who cast nativi-
ties best would generally turn out a superior
man. If alchemy were taught, the young man
who showed most activity in the pursuit of the
philosopher's stone would generally turn out a
superior man. LORD MACAULAY :
Speech on the Government of India , July
10, 1833.
We cannot wish that any work or class of
Works which has exercised a great influence on
the human mind, and which illustrates the char-
acter of an important epoch in letters, politics,
| and morals, should disappear from the world.
If we err in this matter, we err with the greatest
men and bodies of men in the empire, and
especially with the Church of England, and
with the great schools of learning which are
connected with her. The whole liberal educa-
tion of our countrymen is conducted on the
principle that no book which is valuable, either
by reason of the excellence of its style, or by
reason of the light which it throws on the his-
tory, polity, and manners of nations, should be
withheld from the student on account of its
impurity. The Athenian Comedies, in which
there are scarcely a hundred lines together
without some passage of which Rochester would
have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the
Pitt Press and the Clarendon Press, under the
direction of syndics and delegates appointed by
the Universities, and have been illustrated with
notes by reverend, very reverend, and right
reverend commentators. Every year the most
distinguished young men in the kingdom are
examined by bishops and professors of divinity
in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes
and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is cer-
tainly something a little ludicrous in the idea of
a conclave of venerable fathers of the church
praising and rewarding a lad on account of his
intimate acquaintance with writings compared
with which the loosest tale in Prior is modest.
But, for our own part, we have no doubt that
the great societies which direct the education
of the English gentry have herein judged,
wisely. It is unquestionable that an extensive
acquaintance with ancient literature enlarges
and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable
that a man whose mind has been thus enlarged
and enriched is likely to be far more useful to
the state and to the church than one who is
unskilled, or little skilled, in classical learning.
On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe
that, in a world so full of temptation as this,
any gentleman whose life would have been vir-
tuous if he had not read Aristophanes and
Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them.
A man who, exposed to all the influences of
such a state of society as that in which we live,
is yet afraid of exposing himself to .the influ-
ences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we
think, much like the felon who begged the
sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his
head from the door of Newgate to the gallows,
because it was a drizzling morning and he was
apt to take cold. The virtue which the world
wants is a healthful virtue, not a valetudinarian
virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the
risks inseparable from all spirited exertion, not
a virtue which keeps out of the common air for
fear of infection and eschews the common food
as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd
to attempt to keep men from acquiring those
qualifications which fit them to play their part
in life with honour to themselves and advantage
to their country for the sake of preserving a
delicacy which cannot be preserved, a delicacy
which a walk from Westminster to the Temple
is sufficient to destroy.
LORD MACAULAY :
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration t
Jan. 1841.
198
EDUCATION.
I believe, Sir, that it is the right and the duty
of the State to provide means of education for
the common people. This proposition seems to
me to be implied in every definition that has
ever yet been given of the functions of a gov-
ernment. About the extent of those functions
there has been much difference of opinion among
ingenious men. There are some who hold that
it is the business of a government to meddle
with every part of the system of human life, to
regulate trade by bounties and prohibitions, to
regulate expenditure by sumptuary laws, to reg-
ulate literature by a censorship, to regulate re-
ligion by an inquisition. Others go to the oppo-
site extreme, and assign to government a very
narrow sphere of action. But the very narrowest
sphere that ever was assigned to governments by
any school of political philosophy is quite wide
enough for my purpose. On one point all the
disputants are agreed. They unanimously ac-
knowledge that it is the duty of every government
to take order for giving security to the persons
and property of the members of the government.
This being admitted, can it be denied that the
education of the common people is a most
effectual means of securing our persons and our
property ? LORD MACAULAY :
Speech on Education, April 1 8, 1847.
This, then, is my argument : It is the duty of
government to protect our persons and property
from danger. The gross ignorance of the com-
mon people is a principal cause of danger to
Our persons and property. Therefore it is the
duty of the government to take care that the
common people shall not be grossly ignorant.
And what is the alternative? It is universally
admitted that, by some means, government must
protect our persons and property. If you take away
education, what means do you leave ? You leave
means such as only necessity can justify, means
which inflict a fearful amount of pain, not only
on the guilty, but on the innocent who are con-
nected with the guilty. You leave guns and
bayonets, stocks and whipping-posts, treadmills,
solitary cells, penal colonies, gibbets. See, then,
how the case stands. Here is an end which, as
we all agree, governments are bound to attain.
There are only two ways of attaining it. One
of these ways is by making men better and
wiser and happier. The other way is by making
them infamous and miserable. Can it be doubted
which way we ought to prefer? Is it not
strange, is it not almost incredible, that pious
and benevolent men should gravely propound
the doctrine that the magistrate is bound to pun-
ish and at the same time bound not to teach ?
To me it beems quite clear that whoever has a
right to hang has a right to educate. Can we
think without shame and remorse that more than
half of those wretches who have been tied up
at Newgate in our time might have been living
happily, that more than half of those who are
now in our gaols might have been enjoying lib-
erty and using that liberty well, that such a hell
aS Norfolk Island need never have existed, if
we had expended in training honest men but a
small part of what we have expended in hunting
and torturing rogues ?
LORD MACAULAY :
Speech on Education, April 18, 1847.
I say, therefore, that the education of the peo-
ple is not only a means, but the best means, of
obtaining that which all allow to be a chief end
of government ; and, if this be so, it passes my
faculties to understand how any man can gravely
contend that government has nothing to do with
the education of the people.
My confidence in my judgment is strengthened
when I recollect that I hold that opinion in
common with all the greatest lawgivers, states-
men, and political philosophers of all nations
and ages, with all the most illustrious champions
of civil and spiritual freedom, and especially
with those men whose names were once held in
the highest veneration by the Protestant Dis-
senters of England. I might cite many of the
most venerable names of the Old World ; but I
would rather cite the example of that country
which the supporters of the Voluntary system
here are always recommending to us as a pat-
tern. Go back to the days when the little so-
ciety which has expanded into the opulent and
enlightened commonwealth of Massachusetts
began to exist. Our modern Dissenters will
scarcely, I think, venture to speak contumeli-
ously of those Puritans whose spirit Laud and
his High Commission Court could not subdue,
of those Puritans who were willing to leave
home and kindred, and all the comforts and re-
finements of civilized life, to cross the ocean, to
fix their abode in forests among wild beasts and
wild men, rather than commit the sin of per-
forming in the house of God one gesture which
they believed to be displeasing to Him. Did
those brave exiles think it inconsistent with civil
or religious freedom that the State should take
charge of the education of the people ? No,
Sir : one of the earliest laws enacted by the
Puritan colonists was that every township, as
soon as the Lord had increased it to the number
of fifty houses, should appoint one to teach all
children to read and write, and that every town-
ship of a hundred houses should set up a gram-
mar school. Nor have the descendants of those
who made this law ever ceased to hold that the
public authorities were bound to provide the
means of public instruction. Nor is this doctrine
confined to New England. " Educate the people"
was the first admonition addressed by Penn to
the colony which he founded. " Educate the
people" was the legacy of Washington to the
nation which he had saved. " Educate the
people" was the unceasing exhortation of Jeffer-
son : and I quote Jefferson with peculiar pleasure,
because of all the eminent men that have ever
lived, Adam Smith himself not excepted, Jeffer-
son was the one who most abhorred everything
like meddling on the part of governments. Yet
the chief business of his later years was to es-
tablish a good system of State education in Vir-
ginia. LORD MACAULAY:
Speech 'on Education, April iS, 1847.
EDUCATION.
199
A great part of the education of every child
consists of those impressions, visual and other,
which the senses of the little being are taking
in busily, though unconsciously, amid the scenes
of their first exercise ; and though all sorts of
men are born in all sorts of places, poets in
town, and prosaic men amid fields and woody
solitudes, yet, consistently with this, it is also
true that much of the original capital on which
all men trade intellectually through life consists
of that mass of miscellaneous fact and imagery
which they have acquired imperceptibly by the
observations of their early years.
PROFESSOR D. MASSON.
And for the usual method of teaching arts, I
deem it to be an old error of universities, not
yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness
of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning
with arts most easy (and those be such as are
most obvious to the sense) they present their
young unmatriculated novices at first coming
with the most intellective abstractions of logic
arid metaphysics.
MILTON : Of Education.
The main skill and groundwork will be to
temper them such lectures and explanations,
upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw
them in willing obedience. MlLTON.
Now will be the right season of forming them
to be able writers, when they shall be thus
fraught with an universal insight into things.
MILTON.
A complete and generous education fits a man
to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously
all the offices of peace and war. MILTON.
The only true conquests those which awaken
no regret are those obtained over ignorance.
The most honourable, as the most useful, pur-
suit of nations is that which contributes to the
extension of human intellect. The real great-
ness of the French Republic ought henceforth
to consist in the acquisition of the whole sum
of human knowledge, and in not allowing a
single new idea to exist which does not owe its
birth to their exertions.
NAPOLEON I. : To the French Institute.
Education, in the more extensive sense of the
word, may comprehend every preparation that
is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives.
PALEY.
Where education has been entirely neglected,
or improperly managed, we see the worst pas-
sions ruling with uncontrolled and incessant
sway. Good sense degenerates into craft, and
anger rankles into malignity. Restraint, which
is thought most salutary, comes too late, and
the most judicious admonitions are urged in
vain. DR. S. PARR.
Of all the blessings which it has pleased
Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not
one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears
a heavenlier aspect, than education. It is a
companion which no misfortunes can dcpiess
no clime destroy no enemy alienate no des-
potism enslave at home a friend abroad an
introduction in solitude a solace in society
an ornament it chastens vice it guides virtue
it gives at once a grace and government to
genius. Without it, what is man ? A splendid
slave! A reasoning savage! Vacillating be-
tween the dignity of an intelligence derived
from God and the degradations of passions par-
ticipated with brutes, and, in the accident of
their alternate ascendency, shuddering at the ter-
rors of an hereafter, or hugging the horrid hope
of annihilation. CHARLES PHILLIES.
Begin the education of the heart not with the
cultivation of noble propensities, but with the
cutting away of those which are evil. When
once the noxious herbs are withered and rooted
out, then the more noble plants, strong in them-
selves, will shoot upwards. The virtuous heart,
like the body, becomes strong and healthy more
by labour than nourishment. RlCHTER.
Were one to point out a method of educa-
tion, one could not, methinks, frame one more
pleasing or improving than this: where the
children get a habit of communicating thei:
thoughts and inclinations to their best friend
with so much freedom that he can form schemes
for their future life and conduct from an obser-
vation of their tempers, and by that means be
early enough in choosing their way of life to
make them forward in some art or science at
an age when others have not determined what
profession to follow.
SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 189.
All nations have agreed in the necessity of a
strict education which consisted in the obser-
vance of moral duties. SWIFT.
You cannot but have observed what a violent
run there is among . . . weak people against
university education. SWIFT.
Those of better fortune, not making learning
their maintenance, take degrees with little im-
provement. SWIFT.
Men are miserable if their education hath
been so undisciplined as to leave them unfur-
nished of skill to spend their time; but most
miserable if such misgovernment and unskil-
fulness make them fall into vicious company.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
In learning anything, as little as possible
should be proposed to the mind at first.
DR. I. WATTS.
Costly apparatus and splendid cabinets have
no magical power to make scholars. As a man
is in all circumstances, under God, the master
of his own fortune, so he is the maker of his
own mind. The Creator has so constituted the
human intellect that it can only grow by its own
action : it will certainly and necessarily grow.
Every man must therefore educate himself.
His books and teacher 
