nance; nor learned that profound part of wisdom, to be difficult of access. Besides, he has clearly mistaken the true use of books, which he has thumbed and spoiled with reading, when he ought to have multiplied them on his shelves: not like a great man of my acquaintance, who knew a book by the back, better than a friend, by the face; although he had never conversed with the former, and often with the latter.
NUMBER XXVII.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1710-11.
THERE is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes, as that of avarice. Those two which seem to rival it in this point, are lust and ambition; but the former is checked by difficulties and diseases, destroys itself by its own pursuits, and usually declines with old age; and the latter requiring courage, conduct, and fortune in a high degree, and meeting with a thousand dangers and oppositions, succeeds too seldom in an age to fall under common observation. Or, avarice is perhaps the same passion with ambition; only placed in more
