Page:Aphorisms — an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887.djvu/28

 mind, the fair view of human nature, that it exhibited, like some of the reflections of Rochefoucauld." On the strength of it he went home with Reynolds, supped with him, and was his friend for life. No moralist with a reputation to lose would like to back Reynolds's remark in the nineteenth century.

Our own generation in Great Britain has been singularly unfortunate in the literature of aphorism. One too famous volume of proverbial philosophy had immense vogue, but it is so vapid, so wordy, so futile, as to have a place among the books that dispense with parody. Then, rather earlier in the century, a clergyman, who ruined himself by gambling, ran away from his debts to America, and at last blew his brains out, felt peculiarly qualified to lecture mankind on moral prudence. He wrote a little book in 1820, called Lacon; or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think. It is an awful example to anybody who is tempted to try. his hand at an aphorism. Thus, "Marriage is a feast where the grace