The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.1

Pitt's Reply to Walpole. Speech, March 6, 1741.

WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 1708-1778.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom. Speech, January 14, 1766.

A long train of these practices has at length unwillingly convinced me that there is something behind the Throne greater than the King himself. Speech, March 2, 1770. (Chatham Correspondence.) Where law ends, tyranny begins.

Speech, Jan. 9, 1770. Case of Wilkes. Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations."

Letter to the Earl of Shelburne, Sept. 29, 1770.

1 This is the composition of Johnson, founded on some note or statement of the actual speech. Johnson said, "That speech I wrote in a garret, in Exeter Street." (See Boswell's Johnson, An. 1741.)

2 Quoted by Lord Mahon, "greater than the Throne itself." History of England, Vol. v. p. 258.

3 Indemnity for the past and security for the future,

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never Speech, Nov. 18, 1777.

never- never.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,—but the King of England cannot enter! all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.1

Speech on the Excise Bill.

We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.

From Prior's Life of Burke, 1790.

LORD LYTTELTON.

1709-1773.

For his chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught

lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, he could wish to blot. Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus.

Women, like princes, find few real friends. Advice to a Lady.

is said to be Mr. Pitt's phrase. See De Quincey, Theol. Essays, Vol. ii. p. 170, and Russell's Memoir of Fox, Vol. iii. p. 345. Letter to the Hon. T. Maitland.

1 From Brougham's Statesmen of George III., First Series, p. 41.

What is your sex's earliest, latest care,

Your heart's supreme ambition? To be fair. Advice to a Lady.

The lover in the husband may be lost.

Ibid.

How much the wife is dearer than the bride. An Irregular Ode.

None without hope e'er loved the brightest fair, But love can hope where reason would despair. Epigram.

Where none admire, 't is useless to excel; Where none are beaux, 't is vain to be a belle. Soliloquy on a Beauty in the Country.

Alas! by some degree of woe

We every bliss must gain;

The heart can ne'er a transport know

That never feels a pain.

EDWARD MOORE.

Song.

1712-1757.

Can't I another's face commend,

And to her virtues be a friend,

But instantly your forehead lowers,
As if her merit lessened yours?

Fable ix. The Farmer, the Spaniel, and the Cat.

The maid who modestly conceals
Her beauties, while she hides, reveals;
Give but a glimpse, and fancy draws
Whate'er the Grecian Venus was.

Fable x. The Spider and the Bee.

But from the hoop's bewitching round,
Her very shoe has power to wound.

349

Fable x. The Spider and the Bee. Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth, And gives to her mind what he steals from her The Happy Marriage.

youth.

'Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.

The Gamester. Act iii. Sc. 4.

DYER.

And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men let him lie.
Published in the early part of the reign of George I.

JOHN BROWN. 1715-1766.

Now let us thank the Eternal Power: convinc'd That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction, That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour Serves but to brighten all our future days. Barbarossa. Act v. Sc. 3.

And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley by a grin. An Essay on Satire, occasioned by the Death of Mr. Pope.1

1 Anderson's British Poets, x. 879. See note in Contemporary Review, Sept. 1867, p. 4.

LAURENCE STERNE. 1713–1768.

Go, poor devil, get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Tristram Shandy. Vol. ii. Ch. xii.

"Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,” cried my uncle Toby, "but nothing to this."

Ibid. Vol. iii. Ch. xi.

The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in ; and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.1

Ibid. Vol. vi. Ch. viii.

"They order," said I, "this matter better in France." Sentimental Fourney. Page 1.

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, 'T is all barren.

Ibid. In the Street. Calais.

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.2

Ibid. Maria.

1 But sad as angels for the good man's sin,

Weep to record, and blush to give it in.

Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, ii. Line 357

2 Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue. - Henri

Estienne, Prémices, etc., p. 47. (1594)

To a close-shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.— Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.