"Legere sine calamo est dormire."--_Quintilian_.
1. "I am resolved, by the grace of God, always to make my heart and
tongue go together: so as never to speak with the one what I do not
think with the other."--_Bishop Beveridge_.
There is a fine philosophy in the above excellent determination of the
pious and learned bishop: it is but a paraphrase of the homely maxim,
"Honesty is the best policy." But the most striking idea conveyed by
it is its negative character: the resolution being, not to speak all
that the heart thinketh, but never to speak what it thinketh not.
2. "I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of
alarming him. You have no business with consequences: you are to tell
the truth."--_Dr. Johnson_.
Boswell says that the Doctor said this to him. I do not doubt it. It
is nothing new. _St. Paul_ said it before Dr. Johnson. "What then?
Shall we do evil that good may come? God forbid!" Now, a lie of this
kind would be venial, where other lies, told upon occasions of less
magnitude and importance, would be unpardonable. And the Doctor's idea
seems to be very well explained in the next passage.
3. "All truth is not of equal importance; but if little violations be
allowed, all violations will, in time, be thought little."--_Dr.
Johnson_.
So much for Truth; which, according to Herodotus, was one of the three
lessons inculcated by the ancient Persians upon their children.
4. "The Four Elements are the Four Volumes in which all Nature's works
are written."--_Jeremy Taylor_.
What is that volume, red-bound and glittering with golden tooling,
more brilliant than the highest reach of Art has ever approached;
dazzling with its illuminated pages, which none can read but the
eagle-eye of him who has learned to gaze upon the living light of
heavenly Truth, as written by the finger of the Almighty Omniscient?
It is the volume of _Fire_--Nature's _Philosophy_. That beautiful
volume, delicately bound in soft cerulean, sparkling with starry
splendors, and redolent of "that odor within the sense, so delicate,
soft, and intense," which gives its pages the fragrance no less than
the shining beauty of Paradise--that volume is _Air_--and it is
Nature's _Music and Poetry_. See Nature's _History_ in those two
immense volumes, _Earth_ and _Water_. In them read the History of
Empires, their rise, decline, and fall: the History of Man; his birth,
his life, and death: the History of Passion; its conception,
development, and disappointment: the History of Evil; its origin,
dominion, and decay: the History of Good; its slow and steady, yet
neglected and uncultured growth--its secret yet secure and strong
dominion--its lasting and undying strength: and the History of all
Nature and her works--recording all her beauties, all her glories, all
her triumphs, all her lessons, all her immortal lore!
5. "Not only by the warmth,
And soothing sunshine of delightful things,
Do minds grow up and flourish."--_Akenside_.
No more than flowers grow up and flourish best, when reared in a
hot-house. Those flowers may have more beauty, but where is the
strength which the free blowing blossom of the wilderness alone
possesses? The corolla is delicate, its petals each a separate
loveliness: but where is the noble stalk sustaining many and more
voluminous, though less gaudy blossoms, which rears its enduring head
aloft, living when the other is dead--fragrant when the other is
withered upon the dewless earth around its drooping stem? Adversity
has been the parent of master minds. Homer and Milton, and Shakspeare,
and Burns--these were no hot-house plants in Nature's garden: they
were born in obscurity; their upward growth was watered with the
dew-like tears of adversity; they were reared in the great wilderness
of the world, amid its storms, its tempests, and its fitful gleams of
sunshine: and _so_ "do minds grow up and flourish."
6. "Renewed friendships are to be conducted with greater nicety than
such as have never been broken."--_Rochefoucault_.
Yes: just as one should handle a porcelain vase, once fractured and
repaired, more carefully than before it was injured.
7. "I do not subscribe to the notion that poets are _born_," said
Herbert.--_Private Life_.
Horace thought otherwise. I never agreed with the Venusian poet.
Walter Scott was not a _born_ poet: he was _made_ by the scenes around
him from his birth. Byron was not a native poet: his early "poetry"
(?) proves the fact abundantly. His only true poetry was the result of
circumstances. His first good poem was _made_ by an article in the
Edinburgh Review. His next was _made_ by an unhappy marriage, and all
the rest that deserved the name have an origin of the kind. Would
Burns the cit have ever turned out what Burns the Ayrshire ploughman
proved, think ye? And was Pope _born_ a poet? No more than Napoleon
was _born_ Emperor of the French!