Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/84

80, which I have found already, twice, I will here exhibit, because I think it better imagined, and better expressed, than could be expected from the common tenour of his prose:

"–As the several combinations of splenetick madness and folly produce an infinite variety of irregular understanding, so the amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found in the moral as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to observe among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth, with a seeming equal force; some who are proud of humility; others who are censorious and uncharitable, yet self-denying and devout; some who join contempt of the world with sordid avarice; and others, who preserve a great degree of piety, with ill-nature and ungoverned passions; nor are instances of this inconsistent mixture less frequent among bad men, where we often, with admiration, see persons at "once