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OMPANY.

Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most disposed to it, that is, in the time of scarcity; because there is nothing on which the passions of men are so violent, and their judgment so weak, and on which there exists such a multitude of ill-founded popular prejudices. BURKE:

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, 1795.

COMMON SENSE.

Common sense is a phrase employed to denote that degree of intelligence, sagacity, and prudence, which is common to all men.

FLEMING.

Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name, having been bequeathed to us by a very complex theory of the senses, and of a sense which was the common bond of them all, and which passed its verdicts on the reports which they severally made of it. R. C. TRENCH.

COMPANY.

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which after the first or second blow may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.

ST. AUGUSTINE.

No man in effect doth accompany with others but he learneth, ere he is aware, some gesture, voice, or fashion.

LORD BACON: Natural History.

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, where there is no love.

LORD BACON.

In young minds there is commonly a strong propensity to particular intimacies and friendships. Youth, indeed, is the season when friendships are sometimes formed which not only continue through succeeding life, but which

glow to the last, with a tenderness unknown to the connections begun in cooler years. The propensity, therefore, is not to be discouraged, though, at the same time, it must be regulated with much circumspection and care. Too many of the pretended friendships of youth are mere combinations in pleasure. They are often founded on capricious likings, suddenly contracted and as suddenly dissolved. Sometimes they are the effect of interested complaisance and flattery on the one side, and of credulous fondness on the other. Such rash and dangerous connections should be avoided, lest they afterwards load us with dishonour.

We should ever have it fixed in our memo. ries, that by the character of those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed, and will certainly be judged of by the world. We ought, therefore, to be slow and cautious in contracting intimacy; but when a virtuous friendship is once established, we must ever consider it as a sacred engagement. BLAIR.

A company consisting wholly of people of the first quality cannot for that reason be called good company, in the common acceptation of the phrase, unless they are, into the bargain, the fashionable and accredited company of the place; for people of the very first quality can be of the meanest degree. On the other hand, a as silly, as ill bred, and as worthless, as people company consisting entirely of people of very low condition, whatever their merits or parts may be, can never be called good company; and consequently should not be much frequented, though by no means despised.

LORD CHESTerfield:

Letters to his Son, Oct. 12, 1748.

Be cautious with whom you associate, and never give your company or your confidence to persons of whose good principles you are not certain. No person that is an enemy to God can be a friend to man. He that has already proved himself ungrateful to the Author of every blessing, will not scruple, when it will himself. He may render you instrumental to serve his turn, to shake off a fellow-worm like his own purposes, but he will never benefit you. A bad man is a curse to others; as he is secretly, notwithstanding all his boasting and affected gaiety, a burden to himself. Shun him as you would a serpent in your path. Be not seduced by his rank, his wealth, his wit, or his influence. Think of him as already in the grave; think of him as standing before the everlasting God in judgment. This awful reality will instantly strip off all that is now so imposing, and present him in his true light, the object rather of your compassion and of your prayers than of your wonder or imitation.

BISHOP W. H. COLERIDGE.

In all societies it is advisable to associate if

possible with the highest: not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can at any time descend; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible. In the grand theatre of human life, a box ticket takes us through the house.

COLTON: Lacon.

They who constantly converse with men far above their estates shall reap shame and loss thereby: if thou payest nothing, they will count thee a sucker, no branch; a wen, no member of their company. T. FULLER.

There is a certain magic or charm in company, for it will assimilate, and make you like to them, by much conversation with them: if they be good company, it is a great means to make you good, or confirm you in goodness;

but if they be bad, it is twenty to one but they will infect and corrupt you. Therefore be wary and shy in choosing and entertaining, or frequenting any company or companions; be not too hasty in committing yourself to them; stand off awhile till you have inquired of some (that you know by experience to be faithful) what they are; observe what company they keep; be not too easy to gain acquaintance, but stand off, and keep a distance yet awhile, till you have observed and learnt touching them. Men or women that are greedy of acquaintance, or hasty in it, are oftentimes snared in ill company before they are aware, and entangled so that they cannot easily loose from it after, when they would. SIR M. HALE.

One that has well digested his knowledge, both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He feels too sensibly how much all the rest of mankind fall short of the notions which he has entertained; and his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further than if they were more general and undistinguished.

DAVID HUME: Essays.

That part of life which we spend in company is the most pleasing of all our moments; and therefore I think our behaviour in it should have its laws as well as the part of our being which is generally esteemed the more important. From hence it is, that from long experience I have made it a maxim, That however we may pretend to take satisfaction in sprightly mirth and high jollity, there is no great pleasure in any company where the basis of the society is not mutual good will. When this is in the room, every trifling circumstance, the most minute accident, the absurdity of a servant, the repetition of an old story, the look of a man when he is telling it, the most indifferent and the most ordinary occurrences, are matters which produce mirth and good-humour.

SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 219.

Men would come into company with ten times the pleasure they do, if they were sure of hearing nothing that would shock them, as well as expected what would please them. When we know every person that is spoken of is represented by one who has no ill will, and everything that is mentioned described by one that is apt to set it in the best light, the entertainment must be delicate, because the cook has nothing brought to his hand but what is the most excellent in its kind. Beautiful pictures are the entertainments of pure minds, and deformities of the corrupted. It is a degree towards the life of angels when we enjoy conversation wherein there is nothing presented but in its excellence : and a degree towards that of demons, wherein nothing is shown but in its degeneracy.

SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 100. As a man is known by his company, so a man's company may be known by his manner of expressing himself. SWIFT.

No man can be provident of his time, who is not prudent in the choice of his company. JEREMY TAYLOR. Company are to be avoided that are good for nothing; those to be sought and frequented that excel in some quality or other.

SIR W. TEMple.

COMPOSITION.

The great art of a writer shows itself in the choice of pleasing allusions, which are generally to be taken from the great or beautiful works of art or nature; for, though whatever is new or uncommon is apt to delight the imagination, the chief design of an allusion being to illustrate and explain the passages of an author, it should be always borrowed from what is more known and common than the passages which are to be explained. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 421.

When I read an author of genius who writes without method, I fancy myself in a wood that abounds with a great many noble objects, rising among one another in the greatest confusion and disorder. When I read a methodical discourse,

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I am in a regular plantation, and can place myself in its several centres, so as to take a view of all the lines and walks that are struck from them. You may ramble in the one a whole day together, and every moment discover something or other that is new to you; but when you have done, you will have but a confused, imperfect notion of the place: in the other your eye commands the whole prospect, and gives you such an idea of it as is not easily worn out of the memory. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 476. There is in all excellencies of composition a kind of poverty or a casualty or jeopardy.

He that confesses his sin, and prays for pardon, hath punished his fault: and then there is nothing left to be done by the offended party but to return to charity. JEREMY TAYLOR.

used in the performance of confession, so that There is a great measure of discretion to be you neither omit it when your own heart may tell you that there is something amiss, nor overscrupulously pursue it when you are not conscious to yourself of notable failings. JEREMY TAYLOR.

You must not only acknowledge to God that you are a sinner, but must particularly enumerate the kinds of sin whereof you know yourself guilty. WAKE.

CONFIDENCE.

Too great confidence in success is the likeliest to prevent it; because it hinders us from making the best use of the advantages which we enjoy. ATTERBURY.

Use such as have prevailed before in things you have employed them; for that breeds confidence, and they will strive to maintain their prescription. LORD BACON.

great effects as a man may doubt that, besides Audacity and confidence doth in business so the very daring and earnestness and persisting and importunity, there should be some secret binding and stooping of other men's spirits to such persons. LORD BACON.

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident security. BURKE.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom. LORD CHATHAM. Confidence, as opposed to modesty, and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, occasioned by ignorance and flattery. JEREMY COLLIER.

Sith evils, great and unexpected, doth cause oftentimes even them to think upon divine power with fearfullest suspicions, which have been otherwise the most sacred adorers thereof; how should we look for any constant resolution of mind in such cases, saving only where unfeigned affection to God hath bred the most assured confidence to be assisted by his hand?

HOOKER.

He that has confidence to turn his wishes into demands, will be but a little way from thinking he ought to obtain them. LOCKE.

A persuasion that we shall overcome any dif ficulties that we meet with in the sciences seldom fails to carry us through them. LOCKE.

Confidence in one's self is the chief nurse of magnanimity; which confidence, notwithstanding, doth not leave the care of necessary furniture for it; and therefore, of all the Grecians, Homer doth ever make Achilles the best armed.

SIR P. SIDNEY.

It concerns all who think it worth while to be in earnest with their immortal souls not to abuse themselves with a false confidence; a thing so easily taken up, and so hardly laid down.

SOUTH.

Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain matter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to the degree of that persuasion which is or ought to be begotten by the efficacy of the authority or the reason inducing thee. JEREMY TAYLOR.

He that puts his confidence in God only is neither overjoyed in any great good things of this life, nor sorrowful for a little thing. JEREMY TAYLOR.

But surely modesty never hurt any cause, and the confidence of man seems to me to be much like the wrath of man. TILLOTSON.

A true and humble sense of your own unworthiness will not suffer you to rise up to that confidence which some men unwarrantably pretend to, nay, unwarrantably require of others.

WAKE.

A confident dependence ill grounded creates such a negligence as will certainly ruin us in the end. WAKE.

CONSCIENCE.

The unanswerable reasonings of Butler never reached the ear of the gray-haired pious peasant, but he needs not their powerful aid to establish his sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality. It is no induction of logic that has transfixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse, when he withers beneath an influence unseen by mortal eye, and shrinks from the anticipation of a reckoning to come. In both the evidence is within, a part of the original constitution of every rational mind, planted there by Him who framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power of conscience: with an authority which no man can put away from him it pleads at once for his own future existence, and for the moral attributes of an omnipresent and ever-present Deity. In a healthy state of the moral feelings, the man recognizes its claim to supreme dominion. Amid the degradation of guilt it still raises its voice and asserts its right to govern the whole man; and though its warnings are disregarded, and its claims disallowed, it proves within his inmost soul an accuser that cannot be stilled, and an avenging spirit that never is quenched.

DR. J. ABERCROMBIE.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neg lected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct when the verdict which he

passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 122.

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body: it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us. ADDISON.

Merit and good works is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the ac complishment of man's rest. LORD BACON.

He has a secret spring of spiritual joy and the continual feast of a good conscience within that forbids him to be miserable. BENTLEY.

Conscience is too great a power in the nature of man to be altogether subdued: it may for a time be repressed and kept dormant; but conjectures there are in human life which awaken it; and when once re-awakened, it flashes on the sinner's mind with all the horrors of an invisible ruler and a future judgment. BLAIR.

Men want arguments to reconcile their minds to what is done, as well as motives originally to act right. BURKE: To the Marquis of Rockingham, Nov. 14, 1769.

It is thus, and for the same end, that they endeavour to destroy that tribunal of conscience which exists independently of edicts and decrees. Your despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage. Their object is, that their fellow-citizens may be under the dominion of no awe but that of their Committee of Research and of their lanterne. BURKE: Letter to a Member of the Nat. Assembly, 1791.

A tender conscience, of all things, ought to be tenderly handled: for if you do not, you injure frame and constitution is injured, recurring at not only the conscience, but the whole moral times to remorse, and seeking refuge only in BURKE: making the conscience callous.

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians,
May 11, 1792.

What act of oblivion will cover them from the wakeful memory, from the notices and issues of the grand remembrancer-the God within? BURKE:

To Rev. Dr. Hussey, Dec. 1796. Conscience is a great ledger-book, in which all our offences are written and registered. ROBERT BURTON. Light as a gossamer is the circumstance which can bring enjoyment to a conscience which is not its own accuser. W. CARLETON.

To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism: had we never sinned, we should have had no conscience. CARLYLE.

Even in the fiercest uproar of our stormy passions, conscience, though in her softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying testimony. DR. T. CHAlmers.

Conscience is nothing but an actuated or reflex knowledge of a superior power and an equitable law; a law impressed, and a power above it impressing it. Conscience is not the lawgiver, but the remembrancer to mind us of that law of nature imprinted upon our souls, and actuate the considerations of the duty and penalty, to apply the rule to our acts, and pass judgment upon matter of fact: it is to give the charge, urge the rule, enjoin the practice of those notions of right, as part of our duty and obedience. But man is as much displeased with the directions of conscience, as he is out of love with the accusations and condemning sentence of this officer of God: we cannot naturally endure any quick and lively practical thoughts of God and his will, and distaste our own consciences for putting us in mind of it: they therefore like not to retain God in their knowledge; that is, God in their own consciences; they would blow it out, as it is the candle of the Lord in them to direct them and their acknowledgments of God, to secure themselves against the practice of its principles.

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Every man's conscience testifies that he is unlike what he ought to be, according to that law engraven upon his heart. In some, indeed, conscience may be seared or dimmer; or sup pose some men may be devoid of conscience, shall it be denied to be a thing belonging to the nature of man? Some men have not their eyes, yet the power of seeing the light is natural to man, and belongs to the integrity of the body. Who would argue that, because some men are mad, and have lost their reason by a distemper of the brain, that therefore reason hath no reality, but is an imaginary thing? But I think it is a standing truth that every man hath been under the scourge of it, one time or other, in a less or a greater degree; for, since every man is an offender, it cannot be imagined conscience, which is natural to man, and an active faculty, should always lie idle, without doing this part CHARNOCK: Attributes.

of its office.

Man in the first instant of the use of reason, finds natural principles within himself; directing and choosing them, he finds a distinction between good and evil; how could this be if there were not some rule in him to try and distinguish good and evil? If there were not such a law and rule in man, he could not sin; for

where there is no law there is no transgression. If man were a law to himself, and his own will his law, there could be no such thing as evil; whatsoever he willed would be good and agreeable to the law, and no action could be accounted sinful; the worst act would be a commendable as the best. Everything at man's appointment would be good or evil. If there were no such law, how should men that are naturally inclined to evil disapprove of that which they practise not? No man but inwardly which is unlovely, and approve of that good thinks well of that which is good, while he neglects it; and thinks ill of that which is evil, while he commits it. Those that are vicious, do praise those that practise the contrary virtues. Those that are evil would seem to be good, and those that are blameworthy yet will rebuke evil in others. This is really to distinguish between good and evil; whence doth this arise, by what rule do we measure this, but by some innate principle? CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Man witnesseth to a God in the operations and reflections of conscience. (Rom. ii. 15.) Their thoughts are accusing or excusing. An inward comfort attends good actions, and an inward torment follows bad ones; for there is in every man's conscience fear of punishment and hope of reward: there is, therefore, a sense of some superior judge, which hath the power both of rewarding and punishing. If man were his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment, since no man would inflict any evil or torment on himself; nor can any man be said to reward himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom the action is pleasing, and is a conferring some good a man had not before; if an action be done by a subject or servant, with hopes of reward, it cannot be imagined that he expects a reward from himself, but from the prince or person whom he eyes in that action, and for whose sake he doth it. CHARNOCK: Attributes.

From the transgression of this law of nature, fears do arise in the consciences of men. Have we not known or heard of men, struck by so deep a dart, that could not be drawn out by the strength of men, or appeased by the pleasure of the world; and men crying out with horror, upon a death-bed, of their past life, when "their fear hath come as a desolation, and destruction as a whirlwind" (Prov. i. 27): and often in some sharp affliction, the dust hath been blown off from men's consciences, which for a while hath obscured the writing of the law. If men stand in awe of punishment, there is then some superior to whom they are accountable; if there were no God, there were no punishment to fear. What reason of any fear, upon the dissolution of the knot between the soul and body, if there were not a God to punish, and the soul remained not in being to be punished?

CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Terrified consciences, that are Magor-missabib, see nothing but matter of fear round about. As they have lived without the bounds of the law, they are afraid to fall under the