kind of splendid Quixotism in standing up, even in the advocating of
absurdity, against the whole world.

_Love_.--Do we imagine, when we open some new treatise on Love, that
the author has discovered a fresh vein, and mined more deeply than all
former adventurers? Not at all: we know very well that the little god has
already usurped all beautiful epithets, all soft expressions, all
bewitching sounds; and the utmost we expect from the skill of the writer
is, that he has thrown all these together, so as to produce a new picture.
Love is immortal, and does not grow wrinkled because we and our
expressions fade. His heart is still as joyous and his foot as light as
when he trod the green knolls of Paradise with Eve. He will be young when
he sits upon the grave of the thousandth generation of our posterity,
listening to the beating of his own heart, or sporting with his butterfly
consort, as childishly as if he were no older than the daisy under his
foot. His empire is a theme of which the tongue never grows weary, or
utters all that seems to come quivering and gasping to the lips for
utterance. We think, more than we ever spoke, of love; and if we have a
curiosity when we first touch some erotic volume, it is to see whether the
author has embodied our unutterable feelings, or divulged what we have
never dared.

_Wit in Season_.--The jest of an ex-minister is as flavourless as a
mummy; as unintelligible as its hieroglyphical epitaph. Three days after
his fall, his wit, under the sponge of oblivion, has grown as much a
mystery as the name of him who built the pyramid, or the taste of Lot's
wife.

_Read my book_.--When Hobbes was at any time at a loss for arguments
to defend his unsocial principles, _vivâ voce_, he always used to