Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/139

 truths can hardly owe much more to the poets than their garb. The fine rectius vives, Licini, etc., is the medio tutissimus ibis of society. When we have to relate something sentimental about a staid and upright man care should be taken not to be verbose; in relating it we ought to be as reticent as the man himself would be in the presence of others. As the gestures and looks by which we outwardly show what we inwardly feel cost us nothing, and are frequently counterfeited, the way of the world is to regard such manifestations, if not as indecorous, at any rate as unmanly. But nowadays our dramatic poets and novelists do just the contrary. They give us nothing but the display of emotions. The worst thought, I suppose, may be so uttered as to have the effect of the best, even though the last means of producing that effect is to put it into the mouth of some ruffian in a novel or a comedy. One never ought to consider the pains that any work, and above all any book, has cost. An author who is ambitious of being read by posterity must not mind dropping hints for entire volumes, or thoughts for whole controversies, at odd corners of his chapters in so casual a way as to make people think that he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. What is the use of reading the ancients if a man has once lost the state of innocence, and wherever he looks re-discovers his own philosophy? The