instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for! and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. HERE Health itself does live, That salt of life, which does to all a relish give; STERNE. The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health. AH! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, And exercise of health! THOMSON. Castle of Indolence. THE common ingredients of health and long life are Easy labour, little care. SIR P. SIDNEY. THE surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill. Most of those evils we poor mortals know, CHURCHILL. SINCE we cannot promise to ourselves constant health, let us aim at such a temper as may be our best support in the decay of it. Spectator, No. 143. PLEASURE OF HEALTHY EXERCISE. O'ER vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills, And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share. HEALTHINESS OF A COUNTRY LIFE. SELDOM shall we see in cities, courts, and rich families, where men live plentifully, and eat and drink freely, that perfect health, that athletic soundness and vigour of constitution, which is commonly seen in the country, in poor houses and cottages, where nature is their cook, and necessity their caterer, and where they have no other doctor but the sun and fresh air, and that such a one as never sends them to the apothecary. HEALTH is the first good lent to men ; A gentle disposition then; Next to be rich by no bye-ways; Lastly, with friends to enjoy our days. SOUTH. HERRICK. GLORY. GLORY is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading, it disperse to naught. Henry VI., First Part, Act I., s. 2. TH' extremes of glory and of shame, Like East and West, become the same; No Indian prince has to his palace More foll'wers than a thief to th' gallows. Hudibras, Part II., Canto 1. THE love of glory can only create a hero, the contempt of it creates a wise man. LET glory be their bait, whose minds TALLEYRAND. Though hawks can prey through storms and winds, The poor bee in her hive must dwell. Glory, the crowd's cheap tinsel, still To what most takes them is a drudge; And they too oft take good for ill, And thriving vice for virtue judge. What needs a conscience calm and bright VAUGHAN. Silex Scintellans. Friar. PRESENT BLESSINGS NOT SUFFICIENTLY VALUED. Much Ado about Nothing, Act IV. THIS truth came borne with bier and pall, I felt it when I sorrow'd most, 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all. Whatever way my days decline, A life that all the Muses deck'd With gifts of grace, that might express And so my passion hath not swerved TENNYSON. In Memoriam. EXAMPLE. PRINCES that would their people should do well, A virtuous court a world to virtue draws. BEN JONSON. PEOPLE seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. GOLDSMITH. No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt. LORD CLARENDON. QUOTH Hudibras, the case is clear, As thou hast prov'd it by their practise; Men's principles by what they do. Hudibras, Part II., Canto 3, I Do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but an example to deter; and as your conduct comprehends every thing that a wise or honest minister should avoid, I mean to make you a negative instruction to your successors for ever. JUNIUS, Letter XII. NOTHING is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or great evil which does not produce its like. We imitate good actions from emulation, and bad ones from the depravity of our nature, which shame would keep prisoner, and example sets at liberty. ROCHEFOUCAULD. HONOUR. Yea, How then? Or take Falstaff. WELL, 'tis no matter: honour pricks me on. but how if honour prick me off when I come on? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word. What is in that word, honour? What is that honour ? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. It is insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it :-therefore I'll none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism. Henry IV., First Part, Act V., s. 1. HONOUR is like that glassy bubble That finds philosophers such trouble, Whose least part crack'd, the whole does fly, And wits are crack'd, to find out why. Quoth Ralph, Honour's but a word To swear by only in a Lord: In other men 'tis but a huff, To vapour with instead of proof; * The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals. ROCHEFOUCAULD. That like a wen looks big and swells, It has the world's opinion still. Hudibras, Part II., Canto 2. HONOUR is but a fictitious kind of honesty; a mean but a necessary substitute for it in societies who 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. Thoughts, POPE and SWIFT. THE difference there is betwixt honour and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive: the mere honest man does that from duty, which the man of honour does for the sake of character. QUOTH he, That man is sure to lose SHENSTONE. Hudibras, Part II., Canto 2. WHERE Honour is a support to virtuous principles, and runs parallel with the laws of God and our country, it cannot be too much cherished and encouraged. But when the dictates of honour are contrary to those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest depravations of human nature by giving wrong ambitions and false ideas of what is good and laudable, and should therefore be exploded by all governments, and driven out as the bane and plague of human society. Spectator, No. 99. PURITY is the feminine; Truth the masculine of Honour. WHOSO in pompe of prowd estate quoth she And in oblivion ever buried is; Where ease abounds, yts eath to doe amis; Abroad in armes, at home in studious kynd, Who seekes with painfull toile shall Honor soonest fynd.* Where danger most appears, there fear it least; For Honor dwells in hard attempts, my sons, And greatest praise in greatest peril wuns. FAIRFAX' TASSO. Jerusalem Delivered, Book IX., Canto 28. |