power of interposing a remedy by thought or labor, there he has placed things in a state of imperfection, on purpose to stir up human industry, without which life would stagnate, or indeed rather could not subsist at all: Curis acuuntur mortalia corda.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

How inconsistent is man with himself!

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants :

I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces:

I have known men of great valor cowards to their wives:

I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated: I knew three great ministers, who could exactly compute and settle the accompts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own economy.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclind men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.

Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they trust for the disposal of places: I have known a prince more than once choose an able minister; but I never observed that minister to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom he thought the fittest for it. One of the greatest in this age [Harley] owned, and excused the matter, from the violence of parties, and the unreasonableness of friends.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block, he will stumble at a

straw.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.

If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in concern for future ages, how any man will be learned, or any man a lawyer.

Kings are commonly said to have long hands; I wish they had as long ears.

Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish: strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful kings! If

they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue: if they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king, or a good ministry: for which reason all courts are so full of politics.

Silenus, the foster-father of Bacchus, is always carried by an ass, and has horns on his head. The moral is, that drunkards are led by fools, and have a great chance to be cuckolds.

Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage and they were always mortal enemies.

Those who are against religion, must needs be fools; and therefore we read that of all animals, God refused the first-born of an ass. A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot.

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Apollo was held the god of physic, and sender of diseases. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason; their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

A person was asked at court, "what he thought of an ambassador, and his train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes, and gestures?" He said, "it was Solomon's importation, gold and apes."

There is a story in Pausanias of a plot for betraying a city discovered by the braying of an ass; the cackling of geese saved the Capitol; and Catiline's conspiracy was discovered by a whore. These are the only three animals, as far as I remember, famous in history as evidences and informers.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Augustus, meeting an ass with a lucky name, foretold himself good fortune. I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky

names.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth, when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves.every day of their lives?

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty.

Laws penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we wonder that the Bible is so.

A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey that was hung on a fruit-tree, said thus: "Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad to go into the vial, where you see many hundred of your kind dying before you?""The reproach is just," answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies that you will not take warning by your own. If after falling several times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then but resemble you."

An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money and hide them in a hole; which the cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?". "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more use of them than I."

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously contrived.

There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one-third part of the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good fellows would drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and reason.

A motto for the jesuits :

Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?

A man would have but few spectators if he offered to show for threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of gunpowder, and it should not take fire.

Query, Whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead.

Harry Killegrew said to lord Wharton, "You would not swear at that rate if you thought you were doing God honor."

A copy of verses kept in the cabinet, and only shown to a few friends, is like a virgin much sought after and admired; but when printed and published, is like a common whore, whom anybody may purchase for half-a-crown.

Louis XIV. of France spent his life in turning a good name into a great.

Since the union of divinity and humanity is the great article of our religion, it is odd to see some clergymen, in their writings of divinity, wholly devoid of humanity.

The Epicureans began to spread at Rome in the empire of Augustus, as the Socinians, and even the Epicureans too, did in England toward the end of king Charles II.'s reign; which is reckoned, though very absurdly, our Augustan age. They both seem to be corruptions occasioned by luxury and peace, and by politeness beginning to decline.

Sometimes I read a book with pleasure, and detest the author.

At a bookseller's shop some time ago, I saw a book with this title: "Poems by the Author of the Choice." Not enduring to read a dozen lines, I asked the company with me, whether they had ever seen the book, or heard of the poem whence the author denominated himself; they were all as ignorant as I. But I find it common with these small dealers in wit and learning, to give themselves a title from their first adventure, as Don Quixote usually did from his last. This arises from that great importance which every man supposes himself to be of.

One Dennis, commonly called "the critic," who had writ a threepenny pamphlet against the power of France, being in the country, and hearing of a French privateer hovering about the coast, although he were twenty miles from the sea, fled to town, and told his friends, they need not wonder at his haste; for the king of France, having got intelligence where he was, had sent a privateer on purpose to

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catch him."

Dr. Gee, prebendary of Westminster, who had writ a small paper against popery, being obliged to travel for his health, affected to

disguise his person and change his name, as he passed through Portugal, Spain, and Italy; telling all the English he met, "that he a was afraid of being murdered, or put into the Inquisition." He was acting the same farce at Paris, till Mr. Prior (who was then secretary to the embassy) quite disconcerted the doctor by maliciously discovering the secret; and offering to engage, body for body, that not a creature would hurt him, or had ever heard of him or his pamphlet.

A chambermaid to a lady of my acquaintance, thirty miles from London, had the very same turn of thought; when talking with one of her fellow-servants, she said, "I hear it is all over London already that I am going to leave my lady:" and so had a footman, who, being newly married, desired his comrade to tell him freely what the town said of it.

When somebody was telling a certain great minister that people were discontented, "Pho," said he, "half a dozen fools are prating in a coffee-house, and presently think their own noise about their ears is made by the world."

The death of a private man is generally of so little importance to the world, that it cannot be a thing of great importance in itself, and yet I do not observe, from the practice of mankind, that either philosophy or nature have sufficiently armed us against the fears which attend it. Neither do I find anything able to reconcile us to it, but extreme pain, shame, or despair; for poverty, imprisonment, ill fortune, grief, sickness, and old age, do generally fail.

Whence comes the custom of bidding a woman look upon her apron-strings to find an excuse? Was it not from the apron of figleaves worn by Eve, when she covered herself and was the first of her sex who made a bad excuse for eating the forbidden fruit?

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Do not we see how easily we pardon our own actions and passions, and the very infirmities of our bodies: why should it be wonderful to find us pardon our own dulness?

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which, by ill management, makes so contemptible a figure.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Eloquence, smooth and cutting, is like a razor whetted with oil. Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like