Page:Letters, sentences and maxims.djvu/105

 youth of those thorns and briers which scratched and disfigured me in the course of mine. [''Bath, Oct. 4, 1746.'']

—I do not, therefore, so much as hint to you how absolutely dependent you are on me—that you neither have nor can have a shilling in the world but from me; and that as I have no womanish weakness for your person, your merit must, and will, be the only measure of my kindness—I say, I do not hint these things to you because I am convinced that you will act right, upon more noble and generous principles; I mean for the sake of doing right, and out of affection and gratitude to me. [Same date.]

—Mr. Pope says, very truly,

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Castalian spring."

And what is called a smattering of everything infallibly constitutes a coxcomb. I have often, of late, reflected what an unhappy man I must now have been, if I had not acquired in my youth some fund and taste of learning. What could I have done with myself, at this age, without them? I must, as many ignorant people do, have destroyed my health and faculties by setting away the evenings; or, by wasting them frivolously in the tattle of women's company, must have exposed myself to the ridicule and