These, wanting wit, affect gravity, and go by the name of solid men. DRYDEN.

human society would consider the terms upon which people meet in public places, in order to prevent the unseasonable declamations which we meet there. I remember, in my youth, it was the humour at the university, when a fellow pretended to be more eloquent than ordinary, and had formed to himself a plot to gain all our admiration, or triumph over us with an argument, to either of which he had no manner of call; I say, in either of these cases, it was the humour to shut one eye. This whimsical way of taking notice to him of his absurdity has prevented many a man from being a coxcomb. If amongst us, on such an occasion, each man offered a voluntary rhetorician some snuff, it would probably produce the same effect.

SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 197.

It is an unreasonable thing some men expect I have no objection whatever to being a bore. of their acquaintance. They are ever complainMy experience of the world has shown me that, ing that they are out of order, or displeased, or upon the whole, a bore gets on much better in they know not how, and are so far from letting it, and is much more respected and permanently that be a reason for retiring to their own homes, popular, than what is called a clever man. Á that they make it their argument for coming few restless people, with an un-English appetite into company. What has anybody to do with for perpetual variety, have combined to set up accounts of a man's being indisposed but his the bore as a species of bugbear to frighten physician? If a man laments in company, themselves, and have rashly imagined that the where the rest are in humour to enjoy themlarge majority of their fellow-creatures could selves, he should not take it ill if a servant is see clearly enough to look at the formidable ordered to present him with a porringer of caucreature with their eyes. Never did any small dle or posset-drink, by way of admonition that minority make any greater mistake as to the real he go home to bed. extent of its influence! English society has a SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 143. placid enjoyment in being bored. If any man tells me that this is a paradox, I, in return, defy him to account on any other theory for threefourths of the so-called recreations which are accepted as at once useful and amusing by the British nation. Household Words.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer's noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music.

LAMB.

It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit. L'ESTRANGE.

It is with some so hard a thing to employ their time, that it is a great good fortune when they have a friend indisposed, that they may be punctual in perplexing him, when he is recovered enough to be in that state which cannot be called sickness or health; when he is too well to deny company, and too ill to receive them. It is no uncommon case, if a man is of any figure or power in the world, to be congratulated into a relapse. SIR R. STEELE, Tatler, No. 89.

There is a sort of littleness in the minds of men of strong sense, which makes them much more insufferable than mere fools, and has the farther inconvenience of being attended by an endless loquacity; for which reason it would be a very proper work if some well-wisher to

BRAIN.

In short, to be a Bruce, Bonaparte, Luther, Knox, Demosthenes, Shakspeare, Milton, or Cromwell, a large brain is indispensably requisite. But to display skill, enterprise, and fidelity in the various professions of civil life-to cultivate with success the less arduous branches of philosophy-to excel in acuteness, taste, and felicity of expression-to acquire extensive erudition and refined manners-a brain of a moderate size is perhaps more suitable than one that is very large; for wherever the energy is intense, it is rare that delicacy, refinement, and taste are present in an equal degree. Individuals possessing moderate-sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain accumulate around them. Persons with large their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth, and, while unknown, they are not trusted with great undertakings. Often, therefore, such men pine and die in obscurity. When, however, they attain their proper element, they are conscious of greatness, and glory in the expansion of their powers. Their mental energies rise in proportion to the obstacles to be surmounted, and blaze forth in all the magnificence of self-sustaining

energetic genius, on occasions when feebler minds would sink in despair.

GEORGE COMBE: System of Phrenology.

BUNYAN.

The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types are often inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the allegorical disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of death; and we are told that every human being must pass through the river. But Faithful does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's birthright and about his own convictions of sin as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own congregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Christiana's boys as any good ladies might catechise any boys at a Sunday-school. But we do not believe that any man, whatever might be his

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more ex-genius, and whatever his good luck, could long actly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of the workingmen, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress.

LORD MACAULAY:
Southey's Edition of the Pilgrim's
Progress, Dec. 1830.

continue a figurative history without falling into many inconsistencies. We are sure that inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortest and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and the Rambler. The Tale of a Tub and the History of John Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can be properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is not easy to make a simile go on all-fours. But we believe that no human ingenuity could produce such a centipede as a long allegory in which the correspondence between the outward sign and the thing signified should be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, ancient or modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to present to his readers a succession of analogies, each of which may separately be striking and happy, without looking very nicely to see whether they harmonize with each other. This Bunyan has done; and, though a minute scrutiny may detect inconsistencies in every page of his Tale, the general effect which the Tale produces on all persons, learned and unlearned, proves that he

has done well.

LORD MACAULAY: Southey's Edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, Dec. 1830.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in Another ill accident is drought, and the spin-other words that he is wiser to-day than he was dling of the corn; insomuch as the word calamity was first derived from calamus [stalk] when the corn could not get out of the stalk. LORD BACON.

CAUSATION.—CAUTION.—CAVALIERS.

I never knew one who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself. ADDISON.

Some build rather upon the abusing of others, and putting tricks upon them, than upon soundness of their own proceedings. LORD BACON.