Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

be content to reposite his book till all private passions shall cease, and love and hatred give way to curiosity.

Ibid. p. 72.

Those familiar histories which draw the portraits of living manners, may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will, care ought to be taken, that when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited, and that which is likely to operate so strongly, should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects. Rambler, vol. I, p. 21.

It is not a sufficient vindication of a character in history, that it is drawn as it appears; for many characters ought never to be drawn; nor of a narrative, that the train of events is agree able to observation and experience; for that observation which is called knowledge of the world, will be found much more frequently to makę men cunning than good.

Ibid. p. 22.

GOOD-HUMOUR,

Good-humour may be defined, a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every one perceives in himself, when the first transports of new L 6

felicity

felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. 1 Ibid. vol. 2, p. 102.

Good-humour is á state between gaiety and unconcern; the act of a mind at leisure to regard the gratifications of another.

Ibid.

Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please when we are conscious of the power, or show more cruelty than to choose any kind of influence before that of kindness and good-humour. He that regards the welfare of others, should make his virtue approachable, that it may be loved and copied ; and he that considers the wants which every man feels, or will feel, of external assistance, must rather wish to be surrounded by those that love him, than by those that admire his excellencies or solicit his favours; for admiration ceases with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires. A man whose great qualities want the ornament of superficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure is exhausted.

Ibid. p. 105.

Nothing can more show the value of goodhumour, than that it recommends those who are destitute of all other excellencies, and procures regard to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull.

Ibid.

Prince Henry, though well acquainted with the vices and follies of Falstaff, and though his conviction compelled him to do justice to su

2

perior

[ocr errors]

perior qualities, yet no sooner sees him lying on the ground, but he exclaims," he could have' better spared a better man." His tenderness broke out at the remembrance of the cheerful companion and the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the luxury of Idleness, who had gladded him with unenvied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy and despise.

Ibid.

GOOD-HUMOUR,

(Compared with Gaiety.)

Gaiety is to good-humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy or despair. Good-humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.

Ibid., p. 102.

HYPOCRISY..

The hypocrite shows the excellency of virtue by the necessity he thinks himself under of seem-. ing to be virtuous.

Ibid. vol, 1, p. 125

HONOUR.

Among the Symerons, or fugitive Negroes in the South Seas, being a nation that does not set them above continual cares for the immediate necessaries of life, he that can temper iron best, is among them most esteemed: and, perhaps, it would be happy for every nation, if honours and applauses

applauses were as justly distributed, and he were most distinguished whose abilities were most useful to society. How many chimerical titles to precedence, how many false pretences to respect, would this rule bring to the ground!

Life of Drake, p. 175

J.

JEALOUSY,

THAT natural jealousy which makes every man 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. Intellectual decay, doubtless, is not uncommon, but it is not universal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, and Waller at eighty-two is thought to have lost none of his poetical powers,

Life of Waller.

Jealousy is a passion compounded of love and suspicion.

Notes upon Shakspeare, vol. 4, p. 317.

JESTING.

Unless men have the prudence not to appear touched with the sarcasms of a jester, they subject themselves to his power, and the wise man will have his folly anatomised by a fool.

Ibid. vol. 3, p. 306. ́

Jocose

Jocose follies and slight offences are only allowed by mankind in him that overpowers them

by great qualities.

ΤΟΥ.

Ibid. vol. 4, p. 49.

As briers have sweetness with their prickles, so are troubles often recompensed with joy.

Ibid. p. 121.

JUDGMENT.

Those who have no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions.

Life of Milton.

As laws operate in civil agency, not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of wickedness, so judgment, in the operations of intellect, can hinder faults, but not produce excellence.

Life of Prior,

Nothing is more unjust than to judge of a 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 not yet extinguished, but may, by the breath of counsel and exhortation, be kindled into a flame. To imagine that every one who is not completely good, as irrevocably abandoned, is to suppose that all are capable of the same degree of excellence; it is, indeed, to exact from all, that perfection which none ever can attain. And since the purest virtue is consistent with some vice, and the virtue of the greatest

« PoprzedniaDalej »