ed by the fortiter in re, is always refpected, commonly fuccessful. In your friendships and connections, as well as in your enmities, this rule is particularly useful; let your firmness and vigour preserve and invite attachments to you; but at the fame time, let your manner hinder the enemies of your friends and dependents from becoming yours: let your enemies be disarmed by the gentleness of your manner, but let them feel at the fame time, the flead:. nefs of your just resentment: for there is a great difference. between bearing malice, which is always ungenerous, and a refolute felf-defence, which is always prudent and juftifiable.

I conclude with this obfervation; That gentleness of manners, with firmness of mind, is a fhort, but full defeription of human perfection, on this fide of religious and moral duties..

LORD CHESTERFIELD.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON GOOD SENSE.

WERE I to explain what I understand by good fenfe, F fhould call it right reafon; but right reafon, that arifes not from formal and logical deductions, but from a fort of intuitive faculty in the foul, which diftinguishes by immediate perception; a kind of innate fagacity, that in many of its properties feems very much to resemble inftinct. It would be improper therefore to say, that Sir Ifaac Newton fhewed his good sense, by thofe amazing difcoveries which he made in natural philofophy: the operations of this gift of heaven are rather instantaneous, than the result of any tedious procefs. Like Diomed, after Minerva had endued him with the power of difcerning gods from mortals, the man of good sense discovers at ence the truth of those objects he is most concerned to

diftinguish; and conducts himself with fuitable caution and security.

It is for this reason, poffibly, that this quality of the mind is not fo often found united with learning as one could wish for good sense being accustomed to receive her difcoveries without labour or study, she cannot so easily wait for those truths, which being placed at a distance, and lying concealed under numberless covers, require much pains and application to unfold.

. But, though good fenfe is not in the number, nor always, it must be owned, in the company of the sciences; yet is it (as the most fenfible of the poets has justly ob ferved)

-fairly worth the fev'n.

Rectitude of understanding is indeed the most useful, as well as the most noble of human endowments, as it is the fovereign guide and director in every branch of civil and focial intercourfe.

Upon whatever occafion this enlightning faculty is exerted, it is always fure to act with diftinguished eminence; but its chief and peculiar province feems to lie in the commerce of the world. Accordingly we may observe, that those who have converfed more with men than with books; whose wisdom is derived rather from expe rience than contemplation; generally poffefs this happy talent with fuperior perfection. For good fenfe, though it cannot be acquired, may be improved; and the world, I believe, will ever be found to afford the most kindly foil for its cultivation.

MELMOTH.

CHAPTER IX.

ON STUDY.

STUDIES ferve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. The chief ufe for delight is in privatenefs and retiring:

for ornament, is in difcourfe; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars one by one: but the general counfels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in fludies, is floth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by duty, and ftudies themselves to give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn ftudies, fimple men admire them, and wife men use them for they teach not their own ufe, but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and confider. Some books are to be tafted, others to be fwallowed, and fome few to be chewed and digested: that is, fome books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and fome few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books alfo may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that should be only in the lefs important arguments, and the meaner fort of books; else diftilled books are like common diftilled wa ters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to feem to know that he doth not,

BACON.

CHAPTER X.

ON SATIRICAL WIT.

TRUST me, this unwary pleasantry of thine will fooner or later bring thee into fcrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can extricate thee out of. In thefe fallies, too oft I fee, it happens that the perfon laughed at, confiders himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights of fuch a fituation belonging to him; and when thou vieweft him in that light too, and reckoneft upon his friends, his family, his kindred, and allies, and muftereft up with them the many recruits which will lift under him from a fenfe of common danger; 'tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou has got an hundred enemies; and, till thou haft gone on, and raised a fwarm of wafps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is fo.

I cannot fufpect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in thefe fallies. I believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive; but confider that fools cannot diftinguish this, and that knaves will not; and thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or make merry with the other: whenever they affociate for mutual defence, depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily fick of it, and of thy life too.

Revenge, from fome baneful corner, fhall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or

The fortunes of thy

integrity of conduct shall set right. houfe fhall totter-thy character, which led the way to them, fhall bleed on every fide of it-thy faith questioned -thy works belied-thy wit forgotten-thy learning trampled on. To wind up the laft fcene of thy tragedy,

K

Cruelty and Cowardice, twin ruffians, hired and fet on by Malice in the dark, fhall ftrike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes. The best of us, my friend, lie open there; and trust me-when to gratify a private appetite, it is once refolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be facrificed, it is an eafy matter to pick up fticks enough from any thicket where it has firayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

CHAPTER XI.

STERNE

HAMLET'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PLAYERS. SPEAK the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not faw the air too much with your hand, thus; but ufe all gently; for in the very torrent, tempeft, and, as I may fay, whirlwind of your paffion, you mult acquire and beget a temperance that may give it? fmoothness. Oh! it offends me to the foul, to hear a robufteous perriwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to fplit the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb fhows and noife: I could have fuch a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

1

Be not too tame neither; but let your own difcretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this fpecial obfervance, that you o'erftep not the modefty of nature: for any thing fo overdone is from the purpose of playing; whofe end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to fhew virtue her own feature, fcorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and preffure." Now this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the