The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant / Being a collection of select pieces from our best modern writers, calculated to eradicate vulgar prejudices and rusticity of manners, improve the understanding, rectify the will, purify the passions, direct the minds of youth to the pursuit of proper objects, and to facilitate their reading, writing, and speaking the English language with elegance and propriety

by John Hamilton Moore

31. If Cælia would be silent, her beholders would adore her; if Iras would talk, her hearers would admire her; but Cælia's tongue runs incessantly, while Iras gives herself silent airs and soft languors; so that 'tis difficult to persuade one's self that Cælia has beauty, and Iras wit: each neglects her own excellence, and is ambitious of the other's character: Iras would be thought to have as much beauty as Cælia, and Cælia as much wit as Iras.

32. The great misfortune of this affectation is, that men not only lose a good quality, but also contract a bad one: they not only are unfit for what they were designed, but they assign themselves to what they are not fit for; and instead of making a very good, figure one way, make a very ridiculous one in another.

33. If Semanthe would have been satisfied with her natural complexion, she might still have been celebrated by the name of the olive beauty; but Semanthe has taken up an affectation to white and red, and is now distinguished by the character of the lady that paints so well.

34. In a word, could the world be reformed to the obedience of that famed dictate, follow nature, which the oracle of Delphos pronounced to Cicero when he consulted what course of studies he should pursue, we should see almost every man as eminent in his proper sphere as Tully was in his, and should in a very short time find impertinence and affectation banished from among the women, and coxcombs and false characters from among the men.

35. For my part I could never consider this preposterous repugnancy to nature any otherwise, than not only as the greatest folly, but also one of the most heinous crimes, since it is a direct opposition to the disposition of providence, and (as Tully expresses it) like the sin of the giants, an actual rebellion against heaven.

SPECTATOR, Vol. VI. No. 404.

Good Humour and Nature.

1. A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back upon his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in his infancy. Sickness, ill-humour, and idleness, will have robbed him of a great share of that space we ordinarily call our life.

2. It is therefore the duty of every man that would be true to himself, to obtain, if possible, a disposition to be pleased, and place himself in a constant aptitude for the satisfaction of his being. Instead of this, you hardly see a man who is not uneasy in proportion to his advancement in the arts of life.