own apparel, and at the same time richly garnishing his footman or his horse. Let the servant appear as fine as ever you please, the world must always consider the master as his superior. And this is that peculiar excellence so much admired in the best painters as well as poets; Raphael as well as Virgil; where somewhat is left to be supplied by the spectator's and reader's imagination.

Methinks, apparel should be rich in the same proportion as it is gay; it otherwise carries the appearance of somewhat unsubstantial; in other words, of a greater desire than ability to make a figure.

Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress, by attending to the beauty of colours, rather than selecting such colours as may increase their own beauty.

I cannot see why a person should be esteemed haughty, on account of his taste for fine clothes, any more than one who discovers a fondness for birds, flowers, moths, or butterflies. Imagination influences both to seek amusement in glowing colours; only the former endeavours to give them a nearer relation to himself. It appears to me, that a person may love splendour without any degree of pride; which is never connected with this taste but when a person demands homage on account of the finery he exhibits: then it ceases to be taste, and commences mere ambition. Yet the world is not enough candid to make this essential distinction.

The first instance an officer gives you of his courage, consists in wearing clothes infinitely superior to his rank.

Men of quality never appear more amiable than

when their dress is plain: their birth, rank, title, and its appendages are at best invidious; and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy. It is otherwise with such as depend alone on personal merit; and it was from hence, I presume, that Quin asserted he could not afford to go plain.

There are certain shapes and physiognomies, of so entirely vulgar a cast, that they could scarce win respect even in the country, though they were embellished with a dress as tawdry as a pulpitcloth.

A large retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.

Why are perfumes so much decryed? When a person, on his approach, diffuses them, does he not revive the idea which the ancients ever entertained concerning the descent of superior beings, "veiled in a cloud of fragrance?"

The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.

XXVI. ON WRITING AND BOOKS.

FINE writing is generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured style.

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and foxhunters.

Instead of whining complaints concerning the imagined cruelty of their mistresses, if poets would address the same to their muse, they would act more agreeable to nature and to truth.

Superficial writers, like the mole, often fancy themselves deep, when they are exceeding near the surface.

"Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam
Viribus".

Authors often fai! by printing their works on a demy-royal, that should have appeared on balladpaper, to make their performance appear laudable.

There is no word, in the Latin language, that signifies a female friend. "Amica" means a mistress: and, perhaps, there is no friendship betwixt the sexes wholly disunited from a degree of love.

The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in the natural manner; in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ?

One can, now and then, reach an author's head when he stoops; and, induced by this circumstance, aspire to measure height with him.

The national opinion of a book or treatise is not always right: "Est ubi peccat." Milton's "Para

dise Lost" is one instance: I mean, the cold reception it met with at first.

Perhaps an acquaintance with men of genius is rather reputable than satisfactory. It is as unaccountable, as it is certain, that fancy heightens scusibility, sensibility strengthens passion, and pasin makes people humourists.

Yet a person of genius is often expected to show more discretion than another man; and this on account of that very vivacity, which is his greatest impediment. This happens for want of distinguishing betwixt the fanciful talents and the dry mathematical operations of the judgment, each of which indiscriminately gives the denomination of a man of genius.

An actor never gained a reputation by acting a bad play, nor a musician by playing on a bad instrument.

Poets seem to have fame, in lieu of most temporal advantages. They are too little formed for business, to be respected; too often feared or envied, to be beloved.

Tully ever seemed an instance to me, how far a man, devoid of courage, may be a spirited writer. One would rather be a stump of laurel than the stump of a church-yard yew tree.

66 Degere more feræ." Vanbrugh seems to have had this of Virgil in his eye, when he introduces Miss Hoyden envying the liberty of a greyhound bitch.

There is a certain flimsiness of poetry, which seems expedient in a song.

Dido, as well as Desdemona, seems to have been a mighty admirer of strange achievements:

"Heu! quibus ille

Jactatus fatis! quæ bella exhausta canebat!

Si mihi non," &c.

This may show that Virgil, Shakspeare, and Shaftesbury, agreed in the same opinion.

It is often observed of wits, that they will lose their best friend for the sake of a joke. Candour may discover, that it is their greater degree of the love of fame, not the less degree of their benevolence, which is the cause.

People in high, or in distinguished life, ought to have a greater circumspection in regard to their most trivial actions. For instance, I saw Mr. Pope -And what was he doing when you saw him?Why, to the best of my memory, he was picking his

nose.

Even Joe Miller, in his jests, has an eye to poetical justice; he generally gives the victory, or turns the laugh, on the side of merit. No small compliment to mankind!

To say a person writes a good style, is originally as pedantic an expression, as to say he plays a good fiddle.

The first line of Virgil seems to patter like an hail-storm.

"Tityre, tu patulæ," &c.

The vanity and extreme self-love of the French is no where more observable than in their authors; and, among these, in none more than Boileau, who, besides his rhodomontades, preserves every the most insipid reading in his notes, though he have removed it from the text for the sake of one ever so much better.