penfity of human nature to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not pursue. THE chief advantage that ancient writers can boaft over modern ones, feems owing to fimplicity. Every noble truth and fentiment was expreffed by the former in a natural manner, in word and phrase fimple, perfpicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ? CHA P. VIII. WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble in rea fon! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehenfion how like a God! Is to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes palaces. He is a good divine who follows his own instructions: I can eafier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. MEN's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. THE web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. THE sense of death is most in apprehenfion ; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In In corporal fufferance feels a pang as great, How far the little candle throws his beams! So fhines a good deed in a naughty world. Love all, truft a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, OUR indifcretion fometimes ferves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us, There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. THE Poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; And as imagination bodies forth The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing, HEAVEN doth with us, as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd, But to fine iffues: nor nature never lends The smallest fcruple of her excellence, Both thanks and ufe. WHAT ftronger breaft-plate than a heart untainted? Whose conscience with injuftice is corrupted. H, world, thy flippery turns! Friends now faft fworn, Whofe hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise On a diffenfion of a doit, break out To bittereft enmity. So felleft foes, Whofe paffions and whose plots have broke their sleep, To take the one the other, by fome chance, Some trick not worth an egg, fhall grow And interjoin their iffues. So it falls out, dear friends, That what we have we prize not to the worth, The The virtue that poffeffion would not shew us COWARDS die many times before their deaths; The valiant never tafte of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It feems to me moft ftrange that men fhould fear; Will come, when it will come. THERE is fome foul of goodness in things evil, For our bad neighbour makes us early firrers: O MOMENTARY grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep. WHO fhall go about To cozen fortune, and be honourable Without the ftamp of merit? Let none prefame O that estates, degrees, and offices, Were not derived corruptly, that clear honour How How many then should cover that stand bare! OH, who can hold a fire in his hand, Tis flander; Whose edge is fharper than the fword; whofe tongue All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and ftates, grave, This viperous flander enters. THERE is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miferies. To-MORROW, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, |