hath underneath! so many tongues! so many voices! she pricks up so many ears! This is a flourish: there follow excellent parables as that she gathereth strength in going; that she goeth upon the ground, and yet hideth her head in the clouds; that in the daytime she sitteth in a watch-tower, and flieth most by night; that she mingleth things done with things not done; and that she is a terror to great cities. LORD BACON : A Fragment of an Essay of Fame. The delight which men have in popularity, fame, submission, and subjection of other men's minds seemeth to be a thing (in itself without contemplation of consequence) agreeable and grateful to the nature of man. LORD BACON: Natural Hist. Fame is an undertaker, that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave. COLTON: Lacon. As for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that. Whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor. COWLEY. Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it. DRYDEN. Fame and reputation are weak ties: many have not the least sense of them: powerful men are only awed by them as they conduce to their interest. DRYDEN. Fame may be compared to a scold: the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet. T. FULLER. A fond fame is best confuted by neglecting it. By fond, understand such a report as is rather ridiculous than dangerous if believed. T. FULLER. Though there may be many rich, many virtuous, many wise men, fame must necessarily be the portion of but few. ROBERT HALL. Man is naturally a prospective creature, endowed not only with a capacity of comparing the present with the past, but also of anticipating the future, and dwelling with anxious rumination on scenes which are yet remote. He is capable of carrying his views, of attaching his anxieties, to a period much more distant than that which measures the limits of his present existence; capable, we distinctly perceive, of plunging into the depths of future duration, of identifying himself with the sentiments and opinions of a distant age, and of enjoying, by anticipation, the fame of which he is aware he shall never be conscious, and the praises he shall never hear. So strongly is he disposed to link his feelings with futurity, that shadows become realities when contemplated as subsisting there; and the phantom of posthumous celebrity, the faint image of his being impressed on future generations, is often preferred to the whole of his present existence, with all its warm and vivid realities. ROBERT HALL: Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte. Of this ambiguous and disputable kind is the love of fame, a desire of filling the minds of others with admiration, and of being celebrated by generations to come with praises which we shall not hear. This ardour has been considered by some as nothing better than splendid madness, as a flame kindled by pride and fanned by folly; for what, say they, can be more remote from wisdom than to direct all our actions by the hope of that which is not to exist till we ourselves are in the grave? To pant after that which can never be possessed, and of which this particular condition, that during life it is the value thus wildly put upon it arises from not to be obtained? To gain the favour and hear the applauses of our contemporaries is indeed equally desirable with any other prerogative of superiority, because fame may be of use to smooth the paths of life, to terrify opposition, and fortify tranquillity; but to what end shall we be the darlings of mankind, when we can no longer receive any benefits from their favour? It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may yet be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they purpose to bestow upon his tomb. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 49. The advocates for the love of fame allege in its vindication that it is a passion natural and universal; a flame lighted by Heaven, and always burning with greatest vigour in the most enlarged and elevated minds. That the desire of being praised by posterity implies a resolution charged upon it is only a noble and disinterto deserve their praises, and that the folly ested generosity, which is not felt, and therefore not understood, by those who have been always accustomed to refer everything to themselves, and whose selfishness has contracted their understandings. That the soul of man, formed for eternal life, naturally springs forward beyond the limits of corporeal existence, and rejoices to consider herself as co-operating with future ages, and as co-extended with endless duration. That the reproach urged with so much petulance, the reproach of labouring for what cannot be enjoyed, is founded on an opinion which may with great probability be doubted; for since we by its separation, why should we conclude that suppose the powers of the soul to be enlarged its knowledge of sublunary transactions is contracted or extinguished? DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 49. How constantly has mortification accompanied triumph! with what secret sorrow has that praise been received from strangers denied to us by our friends! Nothing astonishes me more than the envy which attends literary fame, and the unkindly depreciation which waits upon the FAMILY. Without the permanent union of the sexes there can be no permanent families: the dissolumestic society. But domestic society is the semition of nuptial ties involves the dissolution of do the whole fabric of social institutions would be writer. Of every species of fame it is the most ideal and apart: it would seem to interfere with no one. It is bought by a life of labour; generally, also, of seclusion and privation. It asks its honours only from all that is most touching and most elevated in humanity. What is the reward that it craves?—to lighten many a soli-nary of social affections, the cradle of sensibility, where the first elements are acquired of that tentary hour, and to spiritualize a world that were derness and humanity which cement mankind else too material. What is the requital that the Athenians of the earth give to those who have together; and were they entirely extinguished struggled through the stormy water, and the dark night, for their applause?-Both reproach If the author have-and why and scorn. should he be exempt from?-the faults of his kind, with what greedy readiness are they seized upon and exaggerated! How ready is the sneer against his weakness or his error! What hours of feverish misery have been passed, what bitter tears have been shed, over the unjust censure and the personal sarcasm! The imaginative feel such wrong far beyond what those of less sensitive temperament can dream. Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving; others, though deserving, yet totally miss it, or have it not equal to their deserts. MILTON. Infuse into their young breasts such an ingen uous and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of them renowned. MILTON. If you attain the top of your desires in fame, all those who envy you will do you harm; and of those who admire you few will do you good. Pope. He had an unlimited sense of fame, the attendant of noble spirits, which prompted him to engage in travels. РОРЕ. Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a death-bed. POPE. Fame and glory transport a man out of himself: it makes the mind loose and gairish, scatters the spirits, and leaves a kind of dissolution upon all the faculties. SOUTH. What is common fame, which sounds from all quarters of the world, and resounds back to them again, but generally a loud, rattling, impudent lie? SOUTH. A regard for fame becomes a man more towards the exit than at his entrance into life. SWIFT. The desire of fame hath been no inconsiderable motive to quicken you in the pursuit of those actions which will best deserve it. SWIFT. dissolved. Families are so many centres of atscattered and dissipated by the repulsive powers traction, which preserve mankind from being from particulars to generals. As in the operaof selfishness. The order of nature is ever tions of intellect we proceed from the contemplation of individuals to the formation of general abstractions, so in the development of the passions, in like manner, we advance from private to public affections; from the love of parents, brothers, and sisters, to those more expanded regards which embrace the immense society of human kind. ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity. the domestic circle, you will find that you are Unless you habitually court the privacy of losing that intimate acquaintance with those who compose it which is its chief charm and the source of all its advantage. In your family alone can there be that intercourse of heart with heart which falls like refreshing dew on the soul when it is withered and parched by the heats of business and the intense selfishness which you must hourly meet in public life. Unless your affections are sheltered in that influence of a constant repression of their desanctuary, they cannot long resist the blighting velopment, and a compulsory substitution of calculation in their stead. Domestic privacy is necessary not only to your happiness, but even to your efficiency; it gives the rest necessary to your active powers of judgment and discrimination; it keeps unclosed those well-springs of the heart whose flow is necessary to float onwards the determination of the head. It is not enough that the indulgence of these affections should fill up the casual chinks of your time; they must have their allotted portion of it, with which nothing but urgent necessity should be allowed to interfere. DR. W. C. TAYLOR: The Bishop. FANATICISM. Fanaticism, as far as we are at present concerned with it, may be defined, Such an overwhelming impression of the ideas relating to the future world as disqualifies for the duties of life. From the very nature of fanaticism, it is an evil of short duration. As it implies an irregular movement or an inflamed state of the passions, when these return to their natural state it subsides. Nothing that is violent will last long. The vicissitudes of the world and the business of life are admirably adapted to abate the excesses of religious enthusiasm. In a state where there are such incessant calls to activity, where want presses, desire allures, and ambition inflames, there is little room to dread an excessive attention to the objects of an invisible futurity. ROBERT HALL: Fragment, On Village Preaching A fanatic, either religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions; while the term illusion is applied solely to the visions of an uncontrolled imagination, the chimerical ideas of one blinded by hope, passion, or credulity, or, lastly, to spectral and other ocular deceptions, to which the word delusion is never applied. WHATELY. FASHION. There is a set of people whom I cannot bear -the pinks of fashionable propriety,—whose every word is precise, and whose every movement is unexceptionable, but who, though versed in all the categories of polite behaviour, them. We allow that their manners may be have not a particle of soul or cordiality about abundantly correct. There may be eloquence in every gesture, and gracefulness in every position; not a smile out of place, and not a step that would not bear the measurement of the severest scrutiny. This is all very fine: but what I want is the heart and gaiety of social intercourse; the frankness that spreads ease and animation around it; the eye that speaks affability to all, that chases timidity from every bosom, and tells every man in the company to be confident and happy. This is what I conceive to be the virtue of the text, and not the and would reduce the whole of human life to a sickening formality of those who walk by rule, wire-bound system of misery and constraint. DR. T. CHALMERS. Without depth of thought, or earnestness of feeling, or strength of purpose, living an unreal life, sacrificing substance to show, substicrowd for society, finding its chief pleasure in tuting the fictitious for the natural, mistaking a ridicule, and exhausting its ingenuity in expedients for killing time, fashion is among the last influences under which a human being who respects himself, or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed. W. ELLERY CHANNING. Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash; for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come; but of the two, fashion imposes the heaviest burthen; for she cheats her votaries of their time, their fortune, and their comforts, and she repays them only with the celebrity of being ridiculed and despised: a very paradoxical mode of remuneration, yet always most thankof semblance, and of shade; to be happy is fully received! Fashion is the veriest goddess of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; and even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation. dience at the same time that she imposes a most She requires the most passive and implicit obegrievous load of ceremonies, and the slightest murmurings would only cause the recusant to be laughed at by all other classes, and excommunicated by his own. Fashion builds her temple in the capital of some mighty empire, and, having selected four or five hundred of the silliest people it contains, she dubs them with the magnificent and imposing title of THE WORLD! But the marvel and the misfortune is, that this arrogant title is as universally accred ited by the many who abjure as by the few who adore her; and this creed of fashion requires not only the weakest folly, but the strongest faith, since it would maintain that the minority are the whole, and the majority nothing! Her smile has given wit to dulness, and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue. Yet she is most capricious in her favours, often running from those that pursue her, and coming round to those that stand still. It were mad to follow her, and rash to oppose her, but neither rash nor mad to despise her. COLTON: Lacon. It was a smart reply that Augustus made to one that ministered this comfort of the fatality of things: this was so far from giving any ease to his mind, that it was the very thing that troubled him. TILLOTSON. FEAR. Religious fear, when produced by just apprehensions of a divine power, naturally overlooks all human greatness that stands in competition with it, and extinguishes every other terror. ADDISON. What can that man fear who takes care to Men espouse the well-endowed opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments to make good their beauty or varnish over and cover their de- please a Being that is able to crush all his adformity. FATE. LOCKE. God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under his laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to his purpose. ANTONINUS. We should consider that, though we are tied to the chains of fate, there are none but rational creatures have the privilege of moving freely, and making necessity a choice; all other things are forced onward, and dragged along to their doom. ANTONINUS. A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord or tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of, night and day; on the other hand, there is some comfort that God will be moved by our prayers; but this imports an inexorable necessity. EPICURUS. All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate. PLATO. Concerning fate or destiny, the opinions of those learned men that have written thereof may be safely received had they not thereunto annexed and fastened an inevitable necessity, and made it more general and universally powerful than it is. SIR W. RALEIGH. What must be shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles is little more than choice to him that is willing. SENECA. As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility. SENECA. The Stoics held a fatality, and a fixed unalterable course of events; but then they held also that they fell out by a necessity emergent from and inherent in the things themselves, which God himself could not alter. SOUTH. Others delude their trouble by a graver way of reasoning, that these things are fatal and necessary, it being in vain to be troubled at that which we cannot help. TILLOTSON. versaries? ADDISON. It is no ways congruous that God should be frightening men into truth who were made to be wrought upon by calm evidence and gentle methods of persuasion. ATTERBURY. Until this step is firmly taken, the House will continue under the impression of fear,-the most unwise, the most unjust, and the most cruel of all counsellors. BURKE: Letter to Lord Loughborough, June 15, 1780. Early and provident fear is the mother of safety; because in that state of things the mind is firm and collected, and the judgment unembarrassed. But when the fear and the evil feared come on together, and press at once upon us, deliberation itself is ruinous, which saves upon all other occasions; because, when perils are instant, it delays decision; the man is in a flutter, and in a hurry, and his judgment is BURKE: gone. Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, 1792. seen. There is a courageous wisdom: there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result, not of caution, but of fear. Under misfortunes, it often happens that the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy, present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride by a submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without a question, to be conversant with danger; but in the palpable night of their terrors, men under consternation suppose, not that it is the danger which by a but that it is the courage which produces the sure instinct calls out the courage to resist it, danger. They therefore seek for a refuge in the fears themselves, and consider a temporizing meanness as the only source of safety. BURKE: Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter I., 1796. 234 FEAR.-FEASTING.—FICKLENESS.-FICTION. As our fear excludeth not that boldness which becometh saints, so if our familiarity with God do not savour of fear, it draweth too near that irreverent confidence wherewith true humility can never stand. HOOKER. Many never think on God but in extremity of fear, and then, perplexity not suffering them to be idle, they think and do as it were in a phrenzy. HOOKER. In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil. MRS. JAMESON. The mind frights itself with anything reflected on in gross, and at a distance: things thus offered to the mind carry the show of nothing but difficulty. LOCKE. The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason; that passion alone in the trouble of it exceeding all other accidents. MONTAIGNE. There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find him. PASCAL. Fear is far more painful to cowardice than death to true courage. SIR P. SIDNEY. Fear relies upon a natural love of ourselves, and is complicated with a necessary desire of our own preservation. TILLOTSON. Even our first parents ate themselves out of Paradise; and Job's children junketed anci feasted together often. SOUTH. FICKLENESS. To be longing for this thing to-day, and for that thing to-morrow; to change likings for loathings, and to stand wishing and hankering at a venture, how is it possible for any man to be at rest in this fluctuant wandering humour and opinion? L'ESTRANGE. It carries too great an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly, for men to quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argument which they cannot immediately answer. LOCKE. When a point hath been well examined, and our own judgment settled, after a large survey of the merits of the cause, it would be a weakness to continue fluttering. DR. I. WATTS. FICTION. Fiction is of the essence of poetry as well as of painting: there is a resemblance in one of human bodies, things, and actions which are not real, and in the other of a true story by fiction. DRYDEN. One important rule belongs to the composition of a fiction, which I suppose the writers of fiction seldom think of, viz., never to fabricate or introduce a character to whom greater talents or wisdom is attributed than the author himself possesses: if he does, how shall this character be sustained? By what means should my own fictitious personage think or talk better than Thus does he foolishly who, for fear of any-myself?... We may easily imagine, then, how thing in this world, ventures to displease God; for in so doing he runs away from men and falls into the hands of the living God. qualified the greatest number of novel-writers are for devising thought, speech, and action for heroes, sages, philosophers, geniuses, wits, &c.! Yet this is what they all can do. JOHN FOSTER : Life and Thoughts, by W. W. Everts, 241. He [Bunyan] saw that, in employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself; and he determined to print [his Pilgrim's Progress]. LORD MACAULAY: Life of Bunyan, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., Mere innocent amusement is in itself a good, when it interferes with no greater, especially as it may occupy the place of some other that may in the study of human nature may improve in not be innocent. . . . Those, again, who delight the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY: |