Things to be remembered in daily life : with personal experiences and recollections / by John Timbs.

  • Timbs, John, 1801-1875.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Things to be remembered in daily life : with personal experiences and recollections / by John Timbs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Mayne tlius quaintly describes his flight: Time is the feather'd thing. And whilst I praise The sparklings of thy locks, and call them rays. Takes wing— Leaving behind hirn, as he flies. An unperceived dimness in thine eyes. Gascoigne also thus paints the flight: The heavens on high perpetually do move; By minutes' meal the hour doth steal away. By hours the days, by days the months remove, And then by months the years as fast decay ; Yea, Vu'gil's verse and Tully's truth do say. That Time flieth, and never clasps her wings ; But rides on clouds, and forward still she flings. Shakspeare pictures him as the fell destroyer : Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night; Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care ; Eater of youth, false slave to false delight, Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare : Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are. And Spenser brands him as Wicked Time, that all good thoughts doth waste. And workes of noblest wits to naught outweare. The present section partakes much of the aphoristic character, which has its recommendatory advantages.— Bacon saj'^s : Aphorisms representing a knowledge broken do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods, cany- ing the show of a total, do secure men as if they were at farthest. Again: Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and dehght, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and afiairs. Coleridge is of opinion that, exclusively of the Abstract Sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms ; and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors. There is one way of giving freshness and importance to