medicine after the patient is dead, 22. Great changes affect commonwealths, as thunder does liquors, by making the dregs fly up to the top, 92. The whigs owe all their wealth to wars and revo- lutions, as the girl at Bartholomew fair gets a penny by turning round with swords in her hand, 198. Changing a ministry is like repairing a building; a necessary work; but makes a dust, and disturbs the neighbourhood, 224. The whigs raise the spirits of their friends, recall their strag- glers, and unite their numbers, by sound and im- pudence; as bees assemble and cling together at the noise of brass, vi. 185. An author that puts words together with regard to their cadence, not their meaning, is like a fellow that nailed up maps, some sideling, others upside down, the bet- ter to adjust them to the paunels, 187. A writer with a weak head and corrupt heart is like a hireling jade, dull and yet vicious, 197. After ten glorious campaigns, England (like the sick man) was just expiring with all sorts of good symptoms, v. 271. England, impoverished by an expensive war, will have the comfort of seeing a few rags hung up in Westminster-hall; and of boasting, as beggars do, that their grandfathers were rich and great, 313. This kingdom dieted its own healthy body into a consumption, by plying it with physick instead of food, 315. The Dutch securing to themselves part of the king of Spain's dominions, for whom they fought, and calling him to guaranty the treaty, is like the soldier who robbed the farmer of his poultry, and made him wait at table, vi. 14. With all its successes, will be like the duke, who lost most of his winning at the groom-porter's by a sharper who swept it away into his hat, 16. Bishop Burnett's alarms about popery are like the watchman's thumps at your door, a proof that your door is fast, not that thieves are breaking in,
viii. 129. Taking off the test in Ireland to make it go down the better in England, is like giving a new medicine to a dog before it is prescribed to a human creature, xiii. 108; and was as ill policy as cutting down in a garden the only hedge which shelters from the north, xii. 5. The dissenters attending the bill against the clergy in a kind of triumph, are like the man, who, being kicked down stairs, comforted himself with seeing his friend kicked down after him, xiii. 154,
The English cram one syllable, and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit off their legs to prevent their running away, viii. 186. Objecting to the Christian religion on account of any article which appears not agreeable to our -own corrupted reason, is as wise as if a man, who dislikes one law of his country, should determine to obey no law at all, xiv. 21. The rich are, in troublesome times, often of no use but to be plun- dered, like some sort of birds, who are good for nothing but their feathers, 97. Religion, like all other things, is soonest put out of countenance by being ridiculed, 124. The vapid venom sprink- led over some paltry publications, like the dying impotent bite of a trodden benumbed snake, may be nauseous and offensive, but cannot be very dangerous, iv. 47. Plying an insipid worthless tract with grave and learned answers, is like fling- ing a mountain upon a worm, which, instead of being bruised, by its littleness lodges under it un- hurt, 48. Raillery, the finest part of conversation, is frequently perverted to repartee, as an expensive fashion always produces some paltry imitation, viii. 52. To engage in a bank that has neither act of parliament, charter, nor lands to support it, is like sending a ship to sea without a bottom, xii. 27. In poetry, the smallest quantity of reli- gion, like a single drop of malt liquor in claret,
will muddy and discompose the brightest genius, viii. 61. Philosophy, and other parts of learning, are as necessary to a good poet, as a knowledge of the theory of light to a painter, 65. Flowers of wit should spring, as those in a garden do, from their own root and stem, without foreign assist- ance, 66. Barren wits take in the thoughts of others, in order to draw forth their own, as dry pumps will not play till water is thrown into them, ibid. Abstracts, abridgements, &rc., have the same use as burning glasses; they collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination, 67. Authors are to be used like lobsters; you must look for the best meat in their tails, and lay the bodies back again in the dish, ibid. Those who read only to borrow, i.e. to steal, are like the cunning thieves who cut off the portmanteau from behind, with- out staying to dive into the owner's pockets, ibid. A good poem may be tried like a sound pipkin; if it rings well upon the knuckle, it is without flaw, 68. A wise man makes even his diversions an improvement to him, like the inimitable ma- nagement of the bee, which does the whole busi- ness of life at once, and at the same time both feeds, and works, and diverts itself, 70. An author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him, 73. The Dean's asso- ciating indiscriminately with all parties occasioned his being used like the sober man with the drunken face; he had the scandal of the vice, without the satisfaction, xv. 64. As wounds of the body which bleed inwardly are the most fatal to it, so, in repentance, those of the mind are more des- 'tructive to the body of sin, xiv. 7. Ministers sel- dom give themselves the trouble of recording the important parts of their own administration; like
the masters of a puppetshow, despising those mo- tions which fill common spectators with wonder and delight, vi. 264. Great breaches in govern- ment are like vices in a man, which seldom end but with himself, 351. When a minister grows enormously rich, the publick is proportionably poor; as, in a private family, the steward always thrives the fastest, when the lord is running out, xii. 286. In Wood's halfpence, the nation did not discover the serpent in the brass, but were ready to offer incense to it, xiv. 149. Some ale- sellers, when they have got a vogue for their li- quor, think their credit will put off the worst they can buy, till their customers forsake them; as the drapers, in a general mourning, die black their old damaged goods, sell them at double rates, and then complain that they are ready to starve by the continuance of the mourning, xii. 270. General methods laid down for improving the trade of Ireland, as absurd as if an empirick, knowing that exercise promoted health, should prescribe to his patient in the gout to walk ten miles, xiii. 59. Women revel on Indian poisons, as starlings grow fat with henbane, 60. The private virtues of a courtier, for want of room and time to operate, are (like old clothes) laid up in a chest, against a reverse of fortune; but (like them) unless some- times turned and aired, are apt to be tarnished or moth-eaten, xiv. 243. Swift cured of loving Eng- land, as the fellow was of his ague, by getting himself whipped through the town, xvi. 110, Men of great parts unfortunate in the manage. ment of business, because they are apt to go out of the common road; as a blunt ivory knife di- vides a sheet of paper evenly, while a penknife often goes out of the crease, i. 150. xvi. 205. The Dutch are like a knot of sharpers among honest gentlemen, who think they understand
play, and are bubbled of their money, xix. 77, The inviting indigent foreigners into England, without having lands to give them, is putting them in the situation of children dropped at the doors of private person, who become a burden to the parish, vii. 130. The nation no otherwise richer by such an importation than a man can be said to be fatter by a wen, which intercepts the nourishment that should diffuse itself through the whole body, 131. A wise man ought to have money in his head, but not in his heart, xviii. 314. National corruption must be purged by national calamities, 333. Conversing only on one side ge- nerally gives our thoughts the same turu, just as the jaundice makes those that have it think all things yellow, iv. 277. The aversion of a dis- carded ministry to any government but their own is unalterable; like some rivers, that are said to pass through without mingling with the sea; though disappearing for a time, they arise the same and never change their nature, iv. 319. When those who have cast off all hope desire their impartial friends to embark with them against their prince, it is as absurd as if a man who was flying his country for having committed a murder should desire all his acquaintance to ac- company him, vi. 72. Bishop Fleetwood's sermon on the death of the duke of Gloucester, by the help of a preface, passed for a tory discourse in one reign, and, by omitting the preface, that author appeared a whig in another; thus, by changing the position the picture represents either the pope or the devil, the cardinal or the fool, vi. 95. Company is often like bottled liquors, where the light and windy parts hurry to the head and fix in froth, xii. 40. Quarrelling with a peace not exactly to our minds, is like sueing one who had put out a great fire for lost goods or damaged
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