CCCXLV.

Bestow thy youth so that thou mayst have comfort to remember it, when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Whilst thou art young thou wilt think it will never have an end: but behold, the longest day hath his evening, and that thou shalt enjoy it but once, that it never turns again; use it therefore as the spring-time, which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow all provisions for a long and happy life-Sir W. Raleigh-to his Son.

CCCXLVI.

We bring into the world with us a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the longest, and unquiet at the best; all the imaginations of the witty and the wise have been perpetually busied to find out the ways how to revive it with pleasures, or relieve it with diversions; how to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety. To some of these ends have been employed the institutions of lawgivers, the reasonings of philosophers, the inventions of poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagances of voluptuous men. All the world is perpetually at work about nothing else, but only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and happier for that little time we possess them, or else end the better when we lose them.-Sir W. Temple.

CCCXLVII.

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such, a woman oweth to her husband:
And, when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?-
I am ashamed, that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world;

But that our soft conditions and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great; my reason, haply, more,
To bandy word for word, and frown for frown:
But now, I see our lances are but straws;

Our strength as weak our weakness past compare,—
That seeming to be most, which we least are.

Katherine, in Taming of the Shrew-Shakspeare.

CCXLVIII.

He that wants good sense is unhappy in having learning, for he has thereby only more ways of exposing himself; and he that has sense, knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.-Tatler.

CCCXLIX.

It is most true, that eyes are form'd to serve

The inward light; and that the heavenly part
Ought to be king, from whose rules who do swerve,
Rebels to Nature, strive for their own smart.

It is most true, what we call Cupid's dart,
An image is, which for ourselves we carve;

And fools! adore in temple of our heart

Till that, good God! make church and churchmen starve. True, that true beauty virtue is indeed,

Whereof this beauty can be but a shade

Which elements with mortal mixture breed:
True, that on earth, we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soul up to our country move;
True! and yet true that I must Stella love.

Astrophel and Stella-Sir P. Sidney.

CCCL.

The advice of our friends must be attended to with a judicious reserve; we must not give ourselves up to it, and blindly follow their determination, right or wrong. --Charron.

CCCLI.

Give me flattery,

Flattery the food of courts, that I may rock him,
And lull him in the down of his desires.

CCCLII.

Beaumont.

Were I to buy a hat, I would not have it from a stocking-maker, but a hatter; were I to buy shoes, I should not go to the tailor for that purpose. It is just so with regard to wit: did I, for my life desire to be well served, I would apply only to those who made it their trade, and lived by it. You smile at the oddity of my opinion; but be assured, my friend, that wit is in some measure mechanical; and that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last be happy enough to possess the substance; by a long habit of writing he acquires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner, which holiday writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal.Goldsmith.

CCCLIII.

Poesy, thou sweet'st content,

That e'er heav'n to mortals lent:
Though they as a trifle leave thee,

Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee;

Though thou be to them a scorn,

That to naught but earth are born;

Let my life no longer be,

Than I am in love with thee!

Though our wise ones call it madness,
Let me never taste of gladness
If I love not thy madd'st fits

Above all their greatest wits!

And though some, too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,

Thou dost teach me to contemn

What makes knaves and fools of them!

CCCLIV.

George Wither.

There is I, think, no sort of talent so despisable, as

that of such common critics, who can at best pretend but to value themselves by discovering the defaults of other men, rather than any worth or merit of their own: a sort of levellers, that will needs equal the best or richest of the country, not by improving their own estates, but reducing those of their neighbours, and making them appear as mean and wretched as themselves. The truth is, there has been so much written of this kind of stuff, that the world is surfeited with the same things over and over, or old common notions new dressed, and, perhaps, embroidered.-Sir W. Temple.

CCCLV.

Rightly to be great,

Is, not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,
When houour 's at the stake.

CCCLVI.

Shakspeare.

The heroical virtue is friendship, pretended to by all, but understood or practised by very few, which needs no other manifestation, than that the choleric person thinks it an obligation upon his friend to assist him in a murder; the unthrifty and licentious person expects that friendship should oblige him who pretends to love him to waste all his estate in riots and excesses, by becoming bound for him, and so liable to pay those debts which his pride and vanity contract. In a word, there is nothing that the most unreasonable faction, or the most unlawful combination and conspiracy, can be applied to compass, which is not thought by those who should govern the world to be the proper and necessary office of friendship; and that the laws of friendship are extremely violated and broken, if it doth not engage in the performance of all those offices how unjust and unworthy soever Clarendon.

CCCLIX.

My mortal injuries have turn'd my mind,
And I could hate myself for being kind.

If there be any majesty above,

That has revenge in store for perjur'd love;
Send, heav'n, the swiftest ruin on his head,
Strike the destroyer, lay the victor dead;
Kill the triumpher, and avenge my wrong,
In height of pomp, when he is warm'd and young,
Bolted with thunder, let him rush along:
And when in the last pangs of life he lies,
Grant I may stand to dart him with my eyes;

Nay, after death,

Pursue his spotted soul, and shoot him as he flies. Lee's Alexander.

CCCLVIII.

For my own part who have conversed much with men of other nations, and such as have been both in great employments and esteem, I can say very impar tially, that I have not observed, among any, so much true genius as among the English; no where more sharpness of wit, more pleasantness of humour, more range of fancy, more penetration of thought, or depth of reflection among the better sort; no where more goodness of nature and of meaning, nor more plainness of sense and of life, than among the common sort of country people; nor more blunt courage and honesty than among our seamen. But, with all this, our country must be confessed to be, what a great foreign physician called it, the region of spleen; which may arise a good deal from the great uncertainty and many sudden changes of our weather in all seasons of the year: and how much these effect the heads and hearts, especially of the finest tempers, is hard to be believed by men whose thoughts are not turned to such speculations. Sir W. Temple.

CCCLIX.

The writer who never deviates, who never hazards a new thought, or a new expression, though his friends may compliment him upon his sagacity, though criticism lifts her feeble voice in his praise, will seldom arrive at any degree of perfection. The way to acquire