nity of this single indiscretion, to lift themselves nearer on a
level with a character, which, except in this instance, has always
thrown them at the most disgraceful and mortifying distance.

THE elegant Biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that
unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the
heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties
with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of
firmness, and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher
gifts of the mind; yet difficult as Nature herself seems to have
rendered the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation
of dullness, and of folly to point with gothic triumph to those
excesses which are the overflowing of faculties they never enjoyed."

WHAT the greater part of the world mean by common sense, will be
generally found, on a closer enquiry, to be art, fraud, or selfishness!
That sort of saving prudence which makes men extremely attentive to
their own safety, or profit; diligent in the pursuit of their own
pleasures or interests; and perfectly at their ease as to what becomes
of the rest of mankind. Furies, where their own property is concerned,
philosophers when nothing but the good of others is at stake, and
perfectly resigned under all calamities but their own.

WHEN we see so many accomplished wits of the present age, as remarkable
for the decorum of their lives, as for the brilliancy of their writings,
we may believe, that, next to principle, it is owing to their _good
sense_, which regulates and chastises their imaginations. The vast
conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights,
may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a
natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till
good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards
that virtue which is its proper centre.

ADD to this, when it is considered with what imperfection the Divine
Wisdom has thought fit to stamp every thing human, it will be found,
that excellence and infirmity are so inseparably wound up in each other,
that a man derives the soreness of temper, and irritability of nerve,
which make him uneasy to others, and unhappy in himself, from those
exquisite feelings, and that elevated pitch of thought, by which, as the
apostle expresses it on a more serious occasion, he is, as it were,
out of the body.