Page images
PDF
EPUB

cite instances of those who have borne calamities similar to my own, with fortitude and resignation, this indeed is a proper topic on which to insist, and we have a right to rejoice, not because they had the same calamities, but because they have borne them well. But after all, I fear it must be admitted that our self-love is too apt to draw some consolation, even from so bitter a source as the calamities of others; and I am the more inclined to think so, when I consider the converse of this proposition, and reflect on what takes place within us, with respect to our pleasures. The sting of our pains is diminished, by the assurance that they are commón to all; but from feelings equally egotistical, it unfortunately happens that the zest and relish of our pleasures, is heightened, by the contrary consideration, namely that they are confined to ourselves. This conviction it is, that tickles the palate of the epicure, that inflames the ardour of the lover, that lends ambition her ladder, and extracts the thorns from a crown.

CCXLVIII.

MANY books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason;-they made no such demand, upon those who wrote them. Those works therefore are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. For as the solar light calls forth all the latent powers, and dormant principles of vegetation contained in the kernel, but which, without such a stimulus, would neither have struck root downwards, nor borne fruit upwards, so it is with the light that is intellectual; it calls forth and awakens into energy those latent principles of thought in the minds of others, which without this stimulus, reflection would not have matured, nor examination improved, nor action embodied.

CCXLIX.

THERE is only one circumstance in which the up

right man will imitate the hypocrite; I mean in his attempts to conciliate the good opinion of his fellow men. But here the similarity must cease, for their respective motives are wider than the poles asunder; the former will attempt this to increase his power of doing good, the latter to augment his means of doing harm.

CCL.

WORDS are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channels through which it flows. Thus were a spendthrift to discourse of generosity with a miser, a demagogue to declaim on public good to a patriot, or a bigot to define truth to a philosopher, ought we to wonder if the respective parties mutually misunderstood each other, since on these particular terms, each is his own lexicographer, and prefers his own etymologies to the industry of a Skinner, the real learning of a Junius, or the assumed authority of a Johnson.

CCLI.

PHILOSOPHY is a bully that talks very loud, when the danger is at a distance, but the moment she is hard pressed by the enemy, she is not to be found at her post, but leaves the brunt of the battle to be borne by her humbler but steadier comrade Religion, whom on all other occasions she affects to despise.

CCLII.

THERE are many that despise half the world, but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

CCLIII.

THE Man of Pleasure should more properly be termed the Man of Pain; unlike Diogenes, he purchases repentance at the highest price, and sells the richest reversion, for the poorest reality.

CCLIV.

WHO for the most part are they, that would have all mankind look backwards instead of forwards, and regulate their conduct by things that have been done? those who are the most ignorant as to all things that are doing; Lord Bacon said, time is the greatest of innovators, he might also have said the greatest of improvers, and I like Madame de Stael's observation on this subject, quite as well as Lord Bacon's, it is this, "that past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on an alteration of some past that went before it;" and yet there are not a few grown children of the present day, that would blubber and pout at any attempt to deliver them from the petticoat government and apron-string security of their good great grandmother— Antiquity.

CCLV.

THERE is a hardihood of effrontery, which will, under many circumstances, supply the place of courage, as impudence has sometimes passed current for wit; Wilkes had much of the first, and Mirabeau of the second. He received challenge after challenge, but unlike Wilkes, he accepted none of them, and contented himself, with merely noting down the names of the parties in his pocket book; it is not fair, he would say, that a man of talent like myself should be exposed to blockheads like these. It would seem that he had argued himself into the same kind of self importance with Rosseau, who came to this very disinterested

M

conclusion, that it was incumbent upon him to take the utmost possible care of Jean Jacques for the good of society.

CCLVI.

WE devote the activity of our youth to revelry, and the decrepitude of our age to repentance, and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living we interdicted from the church.

CCLVII.

CHARLES FOX said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added, that reformations are the best mode of preventing the neces-' sity of either.

CCLVIII.

SOME men will admit of only two sorts of excellence, that which they can equal, and what they term a still higher, that which they can surpass, as to those efforts that beat them, they would deny the existence of such rather than acknowledge their own defeat. They are dazzled by the rays of genius, and provoked at their inability to arrive at it; therefore like those idolaters that live too far from the temple, they form and fashion out a little leaden image of their own, before which they fall down, and worship.

CCLIX..

AGE and Love associate not, if they are ever allied the firmer the friendship, the more fatal is its termination, and an old man, like a spider,* can never make love, without beating his own death watch.

It may not be generally known that the male spider is supplied with a little bladder, somewhat similar to a drum, and that ticking noise

CCLX.

THE interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never; for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth, than from its abundance. Some writers, and even on subjects the most abstruse, write so as to be understood by others, firstly, because they understand themselves, and secondly, because they withhold nothing from the reader, but give him all that they themselves possess. For I have before observed, that clear ideas are much more likely to produce clear expressions, than clear expressions are to call out clear ideas, but to minds of the highest order, these two things are reciprocally to each other, both cause and effect, producing an efficiency in mind, somewhat similar to momentum in machinery, where the weight imparts continuation to the velocity, and the velocity imparts power to the weight. In Science, therefore, the whole truth must be told. The boldest political writer of the last century was once asked by a friend of his, a brother author in the bargain, how it happened that whatever came from his pen, excited so great a sensation, and was instantly read by every one, whereas, added his friend, when I write any thing, no such effects are discernible. Sir, said the former in reply, if I were to take a shoe, and cut it longitudinally, into two equal parts, and then show one of the parts so cut, to a savage, and ask him what it was intended for, he would twist it and turn it about in all directions, and presently hand it back again to me, saying he was quite puzzled, and could not say for what it was meant; but if I were to show the same savage the whole shoe, instead of the half of one, he would instantly reply that it was meant for the foot. And this is the difference between you and me-you show people half the truth, and nobody knows what it is meant for; but I show them the whole of the truth, and then every body knows that it is meant for the head.

which has been termed the death watch, is nothing more than the sound he makes upon this little apparatus, in order to serenade and to allure his mistress.

« PreviousContinue »