ed from it, and hath passed through the venom thereof; who hath not drawn the yoke thereof, nor been bound in her bonds; for the yoke thereof is a yoke of iron, and the bands thereof are bands of brass; the death thereof is an evil death.

5. My son, blemish not thy good deeds, neither use uncomfortable words when thou givest any thing. Shall not the dew assuage the heat? So is a word better than a gift. Lo, is not a word better than a gift. But both are with a gracious man.

6. Blame not before thou hast examined the truth; understand first, and then rebuke.

7. If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him; for some men are friends for their own occasions, and will not abide in the day of trouble.

8. Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: A new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.

9. A friend cannot be known in prosperity; and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

10. Admonish thy friend; it may be he hath not done it ; and if he hath, that he should do it no more. Admonish thy friend; it may be he hath not said it; or if he hath, that he should speak it not again. Admonish a friend; for many times it is a slander; and believe not every tale. There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his heart; and who is he that hath not offended with his tongue à e?

11. Whoso discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind.

12. Honour thy father with thy whole heart, and forget not the sorrows of thy mother. How canst thou recompense them the things which they have done for thee?

13. There is nothing of so much worth as a mind well instructed.

14. The lips of talkers will be telling such things as pertain not unto them; but the words of such as have understanding are weighed in the balance. The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the tongue of the wise is in their heart. 15. To labour, and to be contented with what a man hath, is a sweet life.

16. Be not confident, even in a plain way.

17. Be in peace with many; nevertheless have but one counsellor of a thousand.

18. Let reason go before every enterprise, and counsel. before every action.

VI.

1. THE latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

2. Censure, is tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

.

3. Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

4. Party is the madness of many-for the gain of a few. 5. To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks of marble with a razor. 6. Superstition is the spleen of the soul.

7. He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

8. Some people will never learn any thing; for this reason, because they understand every thing too soon.

9. Whilst an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by the worst performance; when he is dead, we rate them by his best.

10. Men are grateful, in the same degree that they are resentful.

11. Young men are subtle arguers; the cloke of honour covers all their faults, as that of passion all their follies. 12. Economy is no disgrace; it is better living on a little than outliving a great deal.

13. Next to the satisfaction I receive in the prosperity of an honest man, I am best pleased with the confusion of a rascal. 14. What is often termed shyness, is nothing more than refined sense, and an indifference to common observation.

15. To endeavour all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philosophy, is to spend so much in armour, that one has nothing left to defend.

16. Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

17. Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives to the persons who possess it, by the partiality it excites in their favour.

18. The difference there is betwixt honour and honesty

seems to be chiefly in the motive. The honest man does that from duty, which the man of honour does for the sake of character.

19. A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

20. Virtue should be considered as a part of taste: and we should as much avoid deceit, or sinister meaning in discourse, as we should puns, bad language, or false grammar. 21. The higher character a person supports, the more he should regard his minutest actions.

VII.

1. DEFERENCE is the most complicated, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

2. To be at once a rake and to glory in the character, discovers at the same time a bad disposition and a bad taste. 3. How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning?

4. Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.

5. Fine sense, and exalted sense, are not half so valuable as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for ready change.

6. Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the most mischievous.

7. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been

in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.

8. Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity, if he was a rich man.

9. It often happens that those are the best people, whose characters have been most injured by slanderers; as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit, which the birds. have been picking at.

10. The eye of a critic is often like a microscope, made so very fine and nice, that it discovers the atoms, grains and minutest particles, without ever comprehending the whole, mparing the parts, or seeing all at once the harmony.

11. Honour is but a fictitious kind of honesty; a mean, but a necessary substitute for it in societies which have none. It is a sort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the sterling cash of true morality and religion.

12. Persons of great delicacy should know the certainty of the following truth: There are many cases which occasion suspense, in which, whatever way they determine, they will repent of their determination; and this through a propensity of human nature, to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not pursue.

13. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God.

14. If 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 that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. 15. Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

16. 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.

VIII.

1. THE sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporeal sufferance, feels a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

2. How far the little candle throws his beam? So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

3.

-Love all, trust a few ;

Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy,
Rather in power than in use: keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be checked for silence,
But never task'd for speech.

4. Our indiscretion sometimes serves 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.

5. What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked (though lock'd up in steel)
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

6. The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherits, shall dissolve;
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wreck behind! We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

That what we have we prize not to the worth
While we enjoy it but being lack'd and lost,
Why then we reck the value; then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us,
While it was ours.

8. Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once.

9. There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;
For our bad neighbours make us early stirrers :
Which is both healthful, and good husbandry;
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all; admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.

10. O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
Who builds his hope in th' air of men's fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

11.

-Who shall go about

To cozen fortune, and be honourable

Without the stamp of merit? let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.

O that estates, degrees and offices,