lls all thoughts of humanity and goodness, and
gives men a sense of the soft affections and impulses of the mind (which
are imprinted in us for our mutual advantage and succour) as of mere
weaknesses and follies. According to the men of cunning, you are to put
off the nature of a man as fast as you can, and acquire that of a
demon, as if it were a more eligible character to be a powerful enemy
than an able friend. But it ought to be a mortification to men affected
this way, that there wants but little more than instinct to be
considerable in it; for when a man has arrived at being very bad in his
inclination, he has not much more to do, but to conceal himself, and he
may revenge, cheat, and deceive, without much employment for
understanding, and go on with great cheerfulness with the high applause
of being a prodigious cunning fellow. But indeed, when we arrive at that
pitch of false taste, as not to think cunning a contemptible quality, it
is, methinks, a very great injustice that pick-pockets are had in so
little veneration, who must be admirably well turned, not only for the
theoretic, but also the practical behaviour of cunning fellows. After
all the endeavour of this family of men whom we call cunning, their
whole work falls to pieces, if others will lay down all esteem for such
artifices, and treat it as an unmanly quality, which they forbear to
practise only because they abhor it. When the spider is ranging in the
different apartments of his web, it is true that he only can weave so
fine a thread; but it is in the power of the merest drone that has wings
to fly through and destroy it.

_Will's Coffee-house, June 28._

Though the taste of wit and pleasure is at present but very low in this
town, yet there are some that preserve their relish undebauched with
common impressions, and can distinguish between reality and imposture. A
gentleman was saying here this evening, that he would go to the play
to-morrow night to see heroism, as it has been represented by some of
our tragedians, represented in burlesque. It seems, the play of
"Alexander" is to be then turned into ridicule for its bombast, and
other false ornaments in the thought as well as the language.[333] The
bluster Alexander makes, is as much inconsistent with the character of a
hero, as the roughness of Clytus is an instance of the sincerity of a
bold artless soldier. To be plain is not to be rude, but rather inclines
a man to civility and deference; no