it be not so singular as to excite a degree of ridicule. The same caution may be requisite in regard to the value of your dress: though splendour be not necessary, you must remove all appearance of poverty: the ladies being rarely enough sagacious to acknowledge beauty through the disguise of poverty. Indeed, I believe sometimes they mistake grandeur of dress for beauty of person.

A PERSON'S manner is never easy, whilst he feels a consciousness that he is fine. The country-fellow, considered in some lights, appears genteel; but it is not when he is dressed on Sundays, with a large nosegay in his bosom. It is when he is reaping, making hay, or when he is hedging in his hurden frock. It is then he acts with ease, and thinks himself equal to his apparel.

WHEN a man has run all lengths himself with regard to dress, there is but one means remaining, which can add to his appearance. And this consists in having recourse to the utmost plainness of his own apparel, and at the same time richly garnishing his footman or his horse. Let the servant appear as fine

as

as ever you please, the world must always consider the master as his superior. And this is that peculiar excellence so much admired in the best painters as well as poets; Raphael as well as Virgil: Where somewhat is left to be supplied by the spectator's and reader's imagination.

METHINKS, apparel should be rich in the same proportion as it is gay: It otherwise carries the appearance of somewhat unsubstantial in other words, of a greater desire than ability to make a figure.

PERSONS are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress, by attending to the beauty of colours, rather than selecting such colours as may increase their own beauty.

I CANNOT see why a person should be esteemed haughty, on account of his taste for fine clothes, any more than one who discovers a fondness for birds, flowers, moths, or butterflies. Imagination influences both to seek amusement in glowing colours; only the former endeavours to give them a nearer relation to himself. It appears to me, that a person may love

splen

splendour without any degree of pride; which is never connected with this taste but when a person demands homage on account of the finery he exhibits. Then it ceases to be taste, and commences mere ambition. Yet the world is not enough candid to make this essential distinction.

THE first instance an officer gives you of his courage, consists in wearing clothes infinitely superior to his rank.

MEN of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title, and its appendages, are at best invidious; and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy. It is otherwise with such as depend alone on personal merit; and it was from hence, I presume, that Quin asserted he could not afford to go plain.

THERE are certain shapes and physiognomies, of so entirely vulgar a cast, that they could scarce win respect even in the country, though they were

em

embellished with a dress as tawdry as a pulpitcloth.

A LARGE retinue upon a small income, like a large cascade upon a small stream, tends to discover its tenuity.

WHY are perfumes so much decried? When a person on his approach diffuses them, does he not revive the idea which the ancients ever entertained concerning the descent of superior beings, "veiled ❝in a cloud of fragrance?"

THE lowest people are generally the first to find fault with shew or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves.

ON

ON WRITING AND BOOKS.

INE writing is generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured style.

LONG sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.

THE world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox

hunters.

INSTEAD of whining complaints concerning the imagined cruelty of their mistresses, if poets would address the same to their Muse, they would act more agreeably to nature and to truth.

SUPERFICIAL writers, like the mole, often fancy

them