nation abounds in physicians, it grows thin of people.* This body of men in our own country may be described like the British army in Cæsar's time. Some of them slay in chariots, and some on foot. If the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried so soon into all quarters of the town, and despatch so much business in so short a time. Besides this body of regular troops, there are stragglers, who, without ing duly enlisted and enrolled, do infinite mischief to those wh are so unlucky as to fall into their hands. Spectator. A DOCTOR is defined to be-a man whom we hire for the purpose of telling stories in the chamber of a sick person, till nature effects a cure, or his medicine kills the patient. THE prince SEWARD. Anecdotes. Of poets, Homer, sung long since, Than half an hundred men of war. So he appear'd; and by his skill, No less than dint of sword, cou'd kill. Hudibras, Part I., Canto 2. PHYSIC, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise or temperance. THE MOON. ADDISON. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Among the stars that have a different birth,- YET few of these far majesties, ah, few! SHELLEY. * A minister being deprived for nonconformity, said to some people, it should cost a hundred men their lives. Some who understood this as to his being a turbulent fellow, that would have moved sedition, complained of him, whereupon being examined, he said his meaning was that he would practise physic. Shakes hand with our own Ceres; every sense As bees gorge full their cells. And by the feud Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest When thy gold breath is misting in the west, And there she sits most meek and most alone; As if thine eye, high poet! was not bent O Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees KEATS. Endymion, Book III. THE Queen of Night, whose large command And over moist and crazy brains Hudibras, Part III., Canto 1. TELL me but what's the natural cause,- The full moon ever, but the half; You may know something more remote. PEDANTRY. Hudibras to Sidrophel. A MAN who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. But we should enlarge the title, and give it to every one that does not know how to think out of his profession and particular way of life. Spectator. So much is to be found in men of all conditions of that which is called Pedantry in scholars; which is nothing else but an obstinate addiction to the forms of some private life, and not regarding general things enough. SPRAT. History of Royal Society. Their poring upon black and white too subtly But never bring the world and books together,* Fed by the peccant humours of learn❜d men, BUTLER. Upon the Abuse of Human Learning. COMPANIONS IN TROUBLE. Edgar. WHEN we our betters see bearing our woes, When that, which makes me bend, makes the king bow. MIGHT stand or fall at least together; No mean or trivial solaces King Lear. * Burke taking notice of Louis XVI. endeavouring to supply the deficiencies of his education by reading, observes, "that the world of which he read and the world in which he lived were no longer the same." A mere contemplative man is obnoxious to this error: he converses chiefly in his closet with the heads and notions of things, and so discerns not their bottoms near and distinctly enough; and thence he is subject to overlook the little circumstances on which all human actions depend. He is still reducing all things to standing doctrines; and therefore must needs be liable to neglect the opportunities, to set upon business too soon or too late; to put those things together in his mind which have no argument in nature. But this above all is his greatest danger, that thinking it still becomes him to go out of the ordinary way, and to refine and heighten the conceptions of the vulgar, he will be ready to disdain all the natural and easy ways of practice, and to believe that nothing ought to be done, though never so common, but by some device of art or trick of unusual wisdom. SPRAT. History of Royal Society. To partners in extreme distress; Hudibras, Part III., Canto 2. Nor custom, nor example, nor vast numbers Of such as do offend, make less the sin. For each particular crime, a strict account will be exacted; And that comfort which The damned pretend, fellows in misery, Takes nothing from their torments. MASSINGER. KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING-THE DISTINCTION. I MAKE a distinction between knowledge and learning; taking knowledge to be properly meant of things that we generally agree to be true, by consent of those that first found them out, or have since been instructed in them: but learning is the knowledge of the different and contested opinions of men in former ages, and about which they have perhaps never agreed in any; * and this makes so much of one and so little of the other in the world. RHETORIC. SIR W. TEMPLE. THE reason of things lies in a narrow compass, if the mind could at any time be so happy as to light upon it. Most of the writings and discourses in the world are but illustration and rhetoric, which signifies as much as nothing to a mind in pursuit after the philosophical truth of things. FIGURATIVE SPEECH AN ABUSE OF LANGUAGE. SOUTH. SINCE wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and * Learning is nothing worth, if wit MONTAIGNE. Essays. Though we may be learned by the help of another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own wisdom. |