EW books are duller than books of Aphorisms and Apophthegms. A Jest-book is,

proverbially, no joke; a Wit-book, perhaps,

worse; but dullest of all, probably, is the Moral-book, which this little volume pretends to be. So with men the Jester, the Wit, and the Moralist, each wearisome in proportion as each deals exclusively in his one commodity. "Too much of one thing," says Fuller, "is good for nothing."

Bacon's "Apophthegms " seem to me the best collection of many men's sayings; the greatest variety of wisdom, good sense, wit, humour, and even simple "naiveté," (as one must call it for want of a native word,) all told in a style whose dignity and antiquity (together with perhaps our secret consciousness of the gravity and even tragic greatness of the narrator) add a particular humour to the lighter stories.

Johnson said Selden's Table-talk was worth all the French "Ana" together. Here also we find wit, humour,

fancy, and good sense alternating, something as one has heard in some scholarly English gentleman's after-dinner talk the best English common-sense in the best common English. It outlives, I believe, all Selden's books; and is probably much better, collected even imperfectly by another, than if he had put it together himself.1

What would become of Johnson if Boswell had not done as much for his talk? If the Doctor himself, or some of his more serious admirers, had recorded it!

And (leaving alone Epictetus, à Kempis, and other Moral aphorists) most of the collections of this nature I have seen, are made up mainly from Johnson and the Essayists of the last century, his predecessors and imitators; when English thought and language had lost so much of their vigour, freshness, freedom, and picturesqueso much, in short, of their native character, under the French polish that came in with the second Charles. When one lights upon," He who "The man who " "Of all the virtues that adorn the breast - &c., one is tempted to swear, with Sir Peter Teazle, against all

ness

In the annotated copy this paragraph has been altered to "A French Epigram of the Time says that Ipecacuana is worth all the Ana which were the fashion in Louis the Fourteenth's Reign. Johnson said our Selden's Table-talk was the same. Here also we find wit, humour, fancy, and good sense alternating, something as one has heard in some scholarly English gentleman's (I fear, a Lawyer's) after-dinner talk.”

"sentiment," and shut the book.

How glad should we

be to have Addison's Table-talk as we have Johnson's! and how much better are Spence's Anecdotes of Pope's Conversation than Pope's own letters!

If a scanty reader could, for the use of yet scantier readers than himself, put together a few sentences of the wise, and also of the less wise, (and Tom Tyers said a good thing or two in his day,1) — from Plato, Bacon, Rochefoucauld, Goethe, Carlyle, and others, a little Truth, new or old, each after his kind

nay, of Truism too, (into which all truth must ultimately be dogs-eared,) and which, perhaps, "the wit of one, and the wisdom of many," has preserved in the shape of some nameless and dateless Proverbs which yet "retain life and vigour,” and widen into new relations with the widening world

Not a book of Beauties other than as all who have the best to tell, have also naturally the best way of telling it; nor of the "limbs and outward flourishes" of Truth, however eloquent; but in general, and as far as I understand, of clear, decided, wholesome, and available

1" Tom Tyers," said Johnson, " describes me best, 'a ghost who never speaks till spoken to.' Another sentence in Tom's 'Resolutions' still remains in my memory, 'Mem. to think more of the living and less of the dead; for the dead have a world of their own.'" Tom was the original of Tom Restless in the Rambler, a literary gossip about London in those days, author of Anecdotes of Pope, Addison, Johnson, &c. Johnson used to say of him, “I never see Tom but he tells me something I did not know before."

insight into our nature and duties.

"Brevity is the soul of Wit," in a far wider sense than as we now use the word. "As the centre of the greatest circle," says Sir Edward Coke, "is but a little prick, so the matter of even the biggest business lies in a little room." So the "Sentences of the Seven," are said to be epitomes of whole systems of philosophy: which also Carlyle says is the case with many a homely proverb. Anyhow that famous Μηδεν Mnder ayar, the boundary law of Goodness itself, as of all other things, (if one could only know how to apply it,) brings one up with a wholesome halt every now and then, and no where more fitly than in a book of this kind, though, as usual, I am just now violating in the very act of vindicating it.'

These oracular Truisims are some of them as impracticable as more elaborate Truths. Who will do "too much" if he knows it is "too much?" "Know thyself" is far easier said than done; and might not a passage like the following make one suppose Shakspeare had Bacon in his eye as the original Polonius, if the dates tallied?

"He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great, nor too small, tasks; for the first will make him dejected by often failures, and the second will make him a small proceeder though by often prevailing. And at the first let him practise with helps, as swimmers do with bladders or rushes; but after a time let him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with thick shoes. For it breeds perfection if the practice be harder than the use. Where nature is mighty, and therefore the victory hard, the degrees had need be, first, to stay and arrest nature in time: like to him that would say over the four and twenty letters when he was angry;