rubbish, which no one thinks it worth his pains to rake into, much less to remove. Honour is but a fictitious kind of honesty ; a mean but a necessary substitute for it, in societies who have none; it is a sort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the sterling cash of true morality and religion. Persons of great delicacy should know the certainty of the following truth: there are abundance of cases which occasion suspense, in which whatever they determine, they will repent of the determination; and this through a propensity of human nature to fancy happiness in those schemes which it does not pursue. The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in a natural manner, in word and phrase simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit ? CHA P. VIII. WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages prince's palaces. He is a good divine who follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching. Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance, feels a pang as great As when a giant dies. How far the little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. -Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than in use: keep thy friend Under thine own life's key: be check'd for silence But never task'd for speech. The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve ; And, like the baseless fabric of a vision Leave not a wreck behind! we are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us, There's a divinity that shapes our ends The poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The form of things unknown, the poet's pen. Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do; But to fine issues: nor Nature never lends Both thanks and use. What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just : And he but naked (though Tock'd up in steel) Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. CHA P. I X. On, world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn, Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise Are still together; who twine, as 'twere, in love On a dissension of a doit, break out Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep, To take the one the other, by some chance, Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends, And interjoin their issues. So it falls out, That what we have we prize not to the worth, While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost Why then we wreak the value; then we find The virtue that possession would not shew us Whilst it was ours. 9 Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard It seems to me most strange that men should fear: Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come, when it will come. There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out, For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers ; Which is both healthful and good husbandry: Besides they are our outward consciences 1 And preachers to us all; admonishing, That we should dress us fairly for our end. O momentary grace of mortal men," Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hope in th' air of men's fair looks, Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep. -Who shall go about To cozen Fortune, and be honourable O that estates, degrees and offices Were not deriv'd corruptly! that clear honour Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand, Or wallow naked in December's snow Fell Sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more, Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore. 'Tis Slander ; Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath states, Maids, matrons, nay the secrets of the grave, This vip'rous Slander enters. There is a tide in the affairs of men 9 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. To-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow Creeps in this petty space from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusky death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more! It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. |