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The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant by John Hamilton Moore
page 43 of 536 (08%)

27. If men would be content to graft upon nature, and assist her
operations, what mighty effects might we expect? _Tully_ would not stand
so much alone in oratory, _Virgil_ in poetry, or _Cæsar_ in war. To
build upon nature, is laying the foundation upon a rock; every thing
disposes itself into order as it were of course, and the whole work is
half done as soon as undertaken. _Cicero's_ genius inclined him to
oratory, _Virgil_'s to follow the train of the muses; they piously
obeyed the admonition, and were rewarded.

28. Had _Virgil_ attended the bar, his modest and ingenuous virtue would
surely have made but a very indifferent figure: and _Tully_'s
declamatory inclination would have been as useless in poetry. Nature, if
left to herself, leads us on in the best course, but will do nothing by
compulsion and constraint; and if we are not satisfied to go her way, we
are always the greatest sufferers by it.

29. Wherever nature designs a production, she always disposes seeds
proper for it, which are as absolutely necessary to the formation of any
moral or intellectual existence, as they are to the being and growth of
plants; and I know not by what fate and folly it is, that men are taught
not to reckon him equally absurd that will write verses in spite of
nature, with that gardener that should undertake to raise a jonquil or
tulip, without the help of their respective seeds.

30. As there is no good or bad quality that does not affect both sexes,
so it is not to be imagined but the fair sex must have suffered by an
affectation of this nature, at least as much as the other: the ill
effect of it is in none so conspicuous as in the two opposite characters
of _Cælia_ and _Iras_. _Cælia_ has all the charms of person, together
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