nce. We think, more than we ever spoke, of love; and if we have a
curiosity when we first touch some erotic volume, it is to see whether the
author has embodied our unutterable feelings, or divulged what we have
never dared.

_Wit in Season_.--The jest of an ex-minister is as flavourless as a
mummy; as unintelligible as its hieroglyphical epitaph. Three days after
his fall, his wit, under the sponge of oblivion, has grown as much a
mystery as the name of him who built the pyramid, or the taste of Lot's
wife.

_Read my book_.--When Hobbes was at any time at a loss for arguments
to defend his unsocial principles, _viva voce_, he always used to
say--"I have published my opinions; consult my works; and, if I am wrong,
confute me publicly." To most persons this mode of confutation was by far
too operose; but they might have confoundedly puzzled the philosopher in
verbal disputation.

_In "Vino Veritas."_--Horace with commendation of kings--

--who never chose a friend
Till with full bowls they had unmasked his soul,
And seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.

But much dependence cannot be placed upon what is wrung out of a man under
the influence of wine, which does not so much unveil as it disarranges our
ideas; and, therefore, whoever contemplates the character from the
combination of ideas produced by intoxication, views man in a false light.
Violent anger has nearly the same effect as wine.

_Cupid_--was painted blind by the ancients, to signify that the
affections prevent the sight, not so much from perceiving outward as
inward defects.

_Character_.--Whoever would study the characters of those with whom
he lives or converses, must keep up the appearance of a kind of
recklessness and frivolity, for the mind closes itself up like the
hedgehog, at the least sensible touch of observation, and will not be
afterwards drawn out. Men have been known in the middle of a discovery of
their character, to be stopped short by a look, which brought them to
themselves, and traced before them in an instant the danger of their
position and the methods of escape. A keen observer, indeed, may always
adjust the temperature of his discourse by the faces of his auditors,
which are saddened or brightened, like the face of the sea in April, as
more or less of the sunshine of rhetoric breaks forth upon them.

_Greatness_.--What renders it difficult for ordinary minds to
discover a great man before he has, like a tree