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FRUGALITY.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty. He that is extravagant, will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption. It will almost always produce a passive compliance with the wickedness of others, and there are few who do not learn by degrees to practise those crimes which they cease to censure.

Ibid, vol. 2, p. 21.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it, very few would be poor.

Ibid.

Though in every age there are some who, by bold adventures or by favourable accidents, rise suddenly into riches, the bulk of mankind must owe their affluence to small and gradual profits, below which their expence must be resolutely reduced.

Ibid. p. 23.

The mercantile wisdom of " a penny saved is two-pence got," may be accommodated to all conditions, by observing, that not only they who pursue any lucrative employment will save time when they forbear expence, and that time may be employed to the increase of profit; but that they, who are above such minute considerations, will find by every victory over appetite or passion, new strength added to the mind, will gain the power of refusing those solicitations by which the young and vivacious are hourly assaulted,

and,

and, in time, set themselves above the reach of extravagance and folly.

Ibid, p. 24.

It may, perhaps, be enquired, by those who are willing rather to cavil than to learn, what is the just measure of frugality? To such no general answer can be given, since the liberty of spending, or necessity of parsimony, may be varied without end by different circumstances. These three rules, however, may be laid down as not to be departed from:

"A man's voluntary expences should not exceed his income."

"Let no man anticipate uncertain profits." "Let no man squander against his inclination."

Ibid.

It appears evident that frugality is necessary. even to complete the pleasure of expence; for it may be generally remarked of those who squander what they know their fortune not sufficient to allow, that, in their most jovial expence, there always breaks out some proof of discontent and impatience they either scatter with a kind of wild desperation and affected lavishness, as criminals brave the gallows when they cannot escape it, or pay their money with a peevish anxiety, and endeavour at once to spend idly, and to save meanly: having neither firmness to deny their passions, nor courage to gratify them, they murmur at their own enjoyments, and poison the bowl of pleasure by reflections on the cost.

Rambler, vol. 3, P. 135.

FAVOUR.

FAVOUR.

Favours of every kind are doubled when they are speedily conferred.

Rambler, vol. 4, 188.

FANCY.

-The fanciful sports of great minds, are never without some advantage to knowledge.

Life of Sir T. Brown, p. 267.

FAULTS.

Many seeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer.

Preface to Johnson's Dictionary, p. 71.`

FABLE.

A fable, to be well adapted to the stage, should be sufficiently removed from the present age, to. admit properly the fictions necessary to complete the plan; for the mind, which naturally loves truth, is always most offended with the violation of those truths of which we are most certain; and we, of course, conceive those facts most certain, which approach nearest to our own time.

Life of Savage.

To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous appendages, has little difficulty; for he that forsakes the probable, may always find the marvellous; and it has little use. We are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or declined.

Life of Gray.

FASHION.

FASHION.

There are few enterprises so hopeless as contests with the fashion, in which the opponents, are not only made confident by their numbers, and strong by their union, but are hardened by contempt of their antagonist, whom they always look upon as a wretch of low notions, contracted views, mean conversation, and narrow fortune; who envies the elevations which he cannot reach; who would gladly embitter the happiness which his inelegance or indigence deny him to partake, and who has no other end in his advice than to revenge his own mortification, by hindering those whom their birth and taste have set above him, from the enjoyment of their superiority, and bringing them down to a level with himself. Rambler, vol. 1, p. 88.

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Though many artifices may be used to maintain falsehood by fraud, they generally lose their force by counteracting one another.

Taxation no Tyranny, p. 4.

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Nil mortalibus arduum est. There is nothing which human courage will not undertake, and little that human patience will not endure.

FACTION.

Falkland Inlands, p. 17.

In the general censure thrown upon faction, it perhaps never happens that every single man should be included. In all lead, says the chemist, there is silver, and in all copper there is gold. But mingled masses are justly denominated by the

greater

greater quantity; and when the precious particles are not worth extraction, a faction and a pig must be melted down together, to the forms. and offices that chance allots them.

False Alarm, p. 52.*

G.

GENIUS.

TRUE genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Life of Cowley.

Genius is powerful when invested with the glitter of affluence. Men willingly pay to fortune that regard which they owe to merit, and are pleased when' they have an opportunity at once of gratifying their vanity, and practising their duty,

Life of Savage.

Whoever is apt to hope, good from others, is diligent to please them; but he that believes his powers strong enough to force their own way, commonly tries only to please himself.

Life of Gay.

Men have sometimes appeared of such transcendant abilities, that their slightest and most cursory performances excel all that labour and study can enable meaner intellects to compose ; as there are regions of which the spontaneous products cannot be equalled in other soils by care and culture. But it is no less dangerous for

any

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