’Tis Good Counsel rather to take Time and Leisure in matters that will
bear it, then to venture Neck and All with overmuch Hast.
All Rash and Aspiring Humours, fall under the Reproof of this Moral;
for there are Climbers in State, as well as in Woods and Orchards; and
Favourites run as great a Risque in Mounting to Honours, Charges and
Preferments, as the Fellow did here in Climbing an _Apple-Tree_. Their
Rise is commonly Gentle and Step by Step; but when they are once up,
they are in danger of falling down again by their own Weight: Wherefore
_Slow_ and _Sure_ in these Cases, is good Counsel. ’Tis a Roguy kind of
a Saying, that _He that will be Rich before Night, may be Hang’d before
Noon_. High Places are Slippery, and it turns the very Brain of a Man
to look down from ’em. He that first call’d _Experience the Mistress of
Fools_, might at the same time have told us upon the Opposition, that
_Nature is the Mistress of Wise Men_: Only the one looks forward from the
Causes into the Effects, and the other traces the Truth, and the Reason
of Things backward, from the Effects up to their Causes. That is to say,
the one Teaches us Wit, by shewing us where we play’d the Fool, and the
other Teaches us Wit, by keeping us before-hand from Playing the Fool at
all. To apply this Moral to the Fable now, the stress of it rests upon
the matter of Foresight, and After-Wit, and the Doctrin tells us, that
he that wants the one, must make his Best of the other: This was the
very Case of the Man in the Orchard here, before and after his Fall. Now
Nature does nothing by _Starts_ and _Leaps_, or in a _Hurry_, as we say;
but all her Motions are Gradual, Regular, and without Noise, which may
serve us for a Lesson, and a President, not to do any thing Rashly.