Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/64

50 worthy of all the pains and trouble they are at; and yet lose their courage as they gain ground, &c." Though this be a falsity; yet to lose courage as we gain ground may very probably happen, if we squander our courage by the yard, and gain ground by the inch.

Ibid. "Of all the virtues human nature would aspire to, constancy seems to be that it is least made for. A steady pursuit of the same end for any long time together has something in it that looks like immortality," [hath not this flight something in it that looks like nonsense:] "and seems to be above the reach of mortal man." [How does a steady pursuit look like immortality? If it looks like immortality, it certainly seems to be above the reach of mortal man.] The "earth we live on, the air we breathe, the nourishment we take, every thing about us, is by nature subject to continual change; our bodies themselves are in a perpetual flux, and not a moment together the same as they were. What place then can there be for a constant steady principle of action amidst so much inconstancy?" If these reasons were true, it would be impossible not to be inconstant. With this old beaten trash of a flux, he might go on a hundred pages on the same subject, without producing any thing new: it is a wonder we had not the grave observation, "That nothing is constant but inconstancy." What does all this end in? His first heat and edge shows us indeed a flux of what we did not expect.

P. 66. "And though the end we aim at be the same it was, and certainly nearer." This puts me in mind of a divine, who, preaching on the day Rh