_Chapman._
21.
_Rich Usurer to his Mistress._
I will not ’joy my treasure but in thee,
And in thy looks I’ll count it every hour;
And thy white arms shall be as bands to me,
Wherein are mighty lordships forfeited.--
Then triumph, Leon, richer in thy love.
Than all the hopes of treasure I possess.
Never was happy Leon rich before;
Nor ever was I covetous till now,
That I see gold so ’fined in thy hair.
_Chapman._
22.
_Puritan._
------ his face demure, with hand
On breast, as you have seen a canting preacher.
Aiming to cheat his audience, wanting matter.
Sigh, to seem holy, till he thought on something.--
_Anon._
23.
_Sects._
Eternity, which puzzles all the world
To name the inhabitants that people it;
Eternity, whose undiscover’d country
We fools divide before we come to see it,
Making one part contain all happiness,
The other misery, then unseen fight for it.
All sects pretending to a right of choice,
Yet none go willingly to take a part.
_Anon._
24.
Man is a vagabond both poor and proud,
He treads on beasts who give him clothes and food;
But the Gods catch him wheresoe’er he lurks,
Whip him, and set him to all painful works:
And yet he brags he shall be crown’d when dead.
Were ever Princes in a Bridewell bred?
Nothing is sinfully begot but he:
Can base-born Bastards lawful Sovereigns be?
_Crowne._
25.
_Wishes for Obscurity._
How miserable a thing is a Great Man!--
Take noisy vexing Greatness they that please;
Give me obscure and safe and silent ease.
Acquaintance and commerce let me have none
With any powerful thing but Time alone:
My rest let Time be fearful to offend,
And creep by me as by a slumbering friend;
Till, with ease glutted, to my bed I steal,
As men to sleep after a plenteous meal.
Oh wretched he who, call’d abroad by power,
To know himself can never find an hour!
Strange to himself, but to all others known,
Lends every one his life, but uses none;
So, e’er he tasted life, to death he goes;
And himself loses, e’er himself he knows.
_Crowne._
26.
_Mind constituted to Goodness._
---- you may do this, or any thing you have a mind to; even in your
fantasy there is a secret counsel, seeing that all your actions, nay
all your pleasures, are in some exercise of virtue--
_H. Killigrew._
27.
_Returned Pilgrim._
To man how sweet is breath! yet sweetest of all
That breath, which from his native air doth fall.
How many weary paces have I measured,
How many known and unknown dangers past,
Since I commenced my tedious pilgrimage,
The last great work of my death-yielding age!
Yet am I blest, that my returning bones
Shall be rak’t up in England’s peaceful earth.
_Anon._
28.
_Usury._
Nature in all inferior things hath set
A pitch or term, when they no more shall get
Increase and offspring. Unrepaired houses
Fall to decay; old cattle cease to breed;
And sapless trees deny more fruit or seed:
The earth would heartless and infertile be.
If it should never have a jubilee.
Only the Usurer’s Money ’genders still;
The longer, lustier; age this doth not kill.
He lives to see his Money’s Money’s Money
Even to a hundred generations reach.
_Anon._
29.
_Love defined by contraries._
Fie, fie, how heavy is light Love in me!--
How slow runs swift Desire!--this leaden air,
This ponderous feather, merry melancholy;
This Passion, which but in passion
Hath not his perfect shape.--
_Day._
30.
_Good Faith._
What are we but _our words?_ when they are past,
Faith should succeed, and that should ever last.
31.
_Weeping for good news._
I knew your eye would be first served;
That’s the soul’s taster still for grief or joy.
_Rowley_
32.
_Forsaken Mistress._
I thought the lost perfection of mankind
Was in that man restored; and I have grieved,
Lost Eden too was not revived for him;
And a new Eve, more excellent than the first,
Created for him, that he might have all
The joys he could deserve: and he fool’d me
To think that Eve and Eden was in me:
That he was made for me, and I for him.
_Crowne._
33.
_Love surviving Hope._
’Tis a vain glory that attends a Lover,
Never to say he quits; and, when Hope dies,
The gallantry of Love still lives, is charm’d
With kindness but in shadow.
_Browne._
34.
_Warriors._
I hate these potent madmen, who keep all
Mankind awake, while they by their great deeds
Are drumming hard upon this hollow world,
Only to make a sound to last for ages.
_Crowne._
35.
_Life._
What is’t we live for? tell life’s finest tale--
To eat, to drink, to sleep, love, and enjoy,
And then to love no more!
To talk of things we know not, and to know
Nothing but things not worth the talking of.
_Sir R. Fane, jun._
36.
_Brother, supposed dead, received by a Sister: she shews him a letter,
disclosing an unworthy action done by him; at which he standing abashed,
she then first congratulates him:_
---- now I meet your love. Pardon me, my brother; I was to rejoyce at
this your sadness, before I could share with you in another joy.
_H. Killigrew._
37.
_Person just dead._
’Twas but just now he went away;
I have not yet had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear,
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in eternity.
_Sir Robert Howard._
38.
_French Character._
The French are passing courtly, ripe of wit;
Kind, but extreme dissemblers: you shall have
A Frenchman ducking lower than your knee,
At the instant mocking ev’n your very shoe-tyes.
_Ford._
39.
_Love must die gently._
I hoped, your great experience, and your years,
Would have proved patience rather to your soul,
Than to break off in this untamed passion.
Howe’er the rough hand of the untoward world
Hath molded your proceedings in this matter,
Yet I am sure the first intent was love.
Then since the first spring was so sweet and warm,
Let it die gently; ne’er kill it with a scorn.
_Anon._
40.
_Poetic Diction._
----- worthiest poets
Shun common and plebeian forms of speech,
Every illiberal and affected phrase,
To clothe their matter; and together tye
Matter and form with art and decency.
_Chapman._
41.
_Author Vanity._
------ the foolish Poet, that still writ
All his most self-loved verse in paper royal,
Or parchment ruled with lead, smooth’d with the pumice,
Bound richly up, and strung with crimson strings;
Never so blest as when he writ and read
The ape-loved issue of his brain; and never
But joying in himself, admiring ever--
_Chapman._
42.
_Good wit to be husbanded._
------ as of lions it is said, and eagles,
That when they go, they draw their seres and talons
Close up, to shun rebating of their sharpness:
So our wit’s sharpness, which we should employ
In noblest knowledge, we should never waste
In vile and vulgar admirations.
_Chapman._
43.
_Impossibility of attaining, a bar to desire._
Nothing is more ordinary, than for my Lady to love her Gentleman; or
Mistress Anne, her father’s man. But if a country clown coming up
hither, and seeking for his lawyer in Gray’s Inn, should step into the
walks, and there should chance to spy some mastership of nature; some
famed Beauty, that for a time hath been the name; he would stand
amazed, perhaps wish that his Joan were such, but further would not be
stirred. Impossibility would
stop more bold desires,
And quench those sparks that else would turn to fires.
_Edmund Prestwick._
44.
_Theory of men’s choice in a Beauty._
1.--She has a most complete and perfect beauty; nor can the greatest
critic in this sort find any fault with the least proportion of her
face, but yet methought I was no more taken with it, than I should be
with some curious well-drawn picture.
2.--That is somewhat strange.
1.--In my mind, not at all; for it is not always that we are governed
by what the general fancy of the world calls beauty; for each soul
hath some predominant thoughts, which when they light on ought that
strikes on them, there is nothing does more inflame. And as in music
_that_ pleaseth not most, which with the greatest art and skill is
composed; but those airs that do resemble and stir up some dormant
passion, to which the mind is addicted; so, I believe, never yet was
any one much taken with a face, in which he did not espy ought that
did rouse and put in motion some affection that hath ruled in his
thoughts, besides those features which, only for the sake of common
opinion, we are forced to say do please.
_E. Prestwick._