[103] A passage may be found in Aristotle’s Politics, vol. i. c. 3-7; where Aristotle advises Alexander to govern the Greeks like his subjects, and the barbarians like slaves; for that the one he was to consider as companions, and the other as creatures of an inferior race.
[104] The following may be mentioned as the most important of these collections:—
“Rome rhymed to Death.” 1683.
“A Collection of the newest and most ingenious Poems, Songs, Catches, &c, against Popery.” 1689.
“Poems on Affairs of State.” 1703-7.
“Whig and Tory; or, Wit on both sides.” 1712.
“Political Merriment; or, Truths told to some Tune.” 1714.
AUTOGRAPHS.[105]
The art of judging of the characters of persons by their handwriting can only have any reality when the pen, acting without restraint, becomes an instrument guided by, and indicative of, the natural dispositions. But regulated as the pen is now too often by a mechanical process, which the present race of writing-masters seem to have contrived for their own convenience, a whole school exhibits a similar handwriting; the pupils are forced in their automatic motions, as if acted on by the pressure of a steam-engine; a bevy of beauties will now write such fac-similes of each other, that in a heap of letters presented to the most sharp-sighted lover to select that of his mistress—though, like Bassanio among the caskets, his happiness should be risked on the choice—he would despair of fixing on the right one, all appearing to have come from the same rolling-press. Even brothers of different tempers have been taught by the same master to give the same form to their letters, the same regularity to their line, and have made our handwritings as monotonous as are our characters in the present habits of society. The true physiognomy of writing will be lost among our rising generation: it is no longer a face that we are looking on, but a beautiful mask of a single pattern; and the fashionable handwriting of our young ladies is like the former tight-lacing of their mothers’ youthful days, when every one alike had what was supposed to be a fine shape!