Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/388

376 76. Wisdom is a Fox, which, after long hunting, must be dug out at last, 80; a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker and coarser coat, and its maggots are the best; or like a sack-posset, in which the deeper you go, it is the sweeter; or a hen, whose cackling must be valued and considered, because attended with an egg; or a nut, which, unless chosen with judgment, may cost a tooth, and pay with nothing but a worm, ibid. A critick who reads only to censure, is as barbarous as a judge who should resolve to hang all that came before him, 102. Criticks improve writers, as the Nauplians learned the art of pruning from an ass's browsing their vines, 107. Like a species of asses, formed with horns, and replete with gall, ibid. Like a serpent in India, found among the mountains where jewels grow; which has no teeth to bite; but its vomit, to which it is much addicted, corrupts every thing it touches, 109. A critick in youth will be a critick in old age; and, like a whore and an alderman, never changes his title or his nature, 110. Sets up with as little expense as a tailor, and with like tools and abilities; the tailor's hell being the type of a critick's commonplace book, and his wit and learning are held forth by the goose; their weapons are near of a size, and as many of the one species go to a man, as of the other to make a scholar, ibid. Their writings called the mirrors of learning, and, like the mirrors of the ancients, made of brass, without mercury, 111. The first result of a critick's mind, like the fowler's first aim, the surest, 112. He is carried to the noblest writers by instinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairest fruit, ibid. In the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently snarls most when there are fewest bones, ibid. Some writers enclose their digressions one in another, like a nest of boxes, 129. Men in misfortune are like men in the dark, to whom all colours are alike, 138. Disputants are for the most part like unequal scales, the gravity of one side advancing the lightness of the other, 143. Digressions in a book are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own, and often subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners, 147. Some know books as they do lords; learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or by inspecting the index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail; that slippery eel of science being held by it, 148. iv. 249. Arts are in a flying march, and more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear; and men catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails, ii. 148. The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot, ib. Cant and vision are to the ear and eye what tickling is to the touch, 170. It itis [sic] with human faculties as with liquors, the lightest