Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu'd, against
The deep damiration of his taking-off:
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blaft, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the fightless courfers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears fhall crown the winds.--I have no fpur
To prick the fides of my intent, but only

Vaulting Ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.

Macbeth, A. 1. Sc. 7.

Let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds fuffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and fleep

In the affliction of thefe terrible dreams,

That thake us nightly: Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our place, have fent to peace,
Than in the torture of the mind to lie

In retlefs extaly.

PICTURE.

Admirable How this grace

Ibid. A. 3. Sc. 2.

Speaks his own ftanding! What a mental power
This eye fhoots forth How big imagination
Moves in this lip! to the dumbness of the gefture
One might interpret,

I'll fay of it,

It tutors nature: Artificial ftrife

Lives in thefe touches, livelier than life.

PLA Y S

Timon of Athens, A. 1. Sc. t.

Good my Lord, will you fee the players well beftowed? Do you hear? let them be well ufed; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the times: after your death, you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

I have heard

Hamlet, A. 2. Sc. 2,

That guilty creatures, fitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the fcene
Been ftruck fo to the foul, that presently

They

They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
-With most miraculous organ.

Ibid.

Speak the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier fpoke my lines. Nor do not faw the air too much with your hands, thus: but ufe all gently; for in the very torrent, tempeft, and (as I might fay) whirlwind of your paffion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it finoothnefs. O! it offends me to the foul, to hear a robuftous perriwig-pated fellow dear a paflion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing, but inexplicable dumb fhews and noife: I would have fuch a fellow whipp'd for overdoing termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you

avoid it.

Be not too tame neither; but let your own difcretion be your tutor : fuit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this fpecial obfervance, that you overstep not the modefty of nature: for any thing fo overdone, is from the purpose of playing, whofe end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to Nature: to fhew Virtue her own feature; Scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the Time, his form and preffure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it may make the unfkilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the cenfure of which one muft, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O! there be players, that I have feen play-and heard others praife, and that highly, not to fpeak it profanely, that neither having the accent of Chritians, nor the gait of Chriftians, Pagans nor men, have fo ftrutted and bellowed, that I have thought fome of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity fo abominably.

Let thofe that play your clowns, fpeak no more than is fet down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to fet on fome quantity of

G S

ba ren

barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, fome neceffary question of the play be then to be confidered. That's villanous, and thews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

Ibid. A. 3. Sc. 2.

POLITICS.

The Devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he cross'd himself by't: and I cannot think but, in the end, the villanies of man will fet him clear. Timon of Athens, A. 3. Sc. 3.

POPULAR

APPLAUSE.

I love the people;

But do not like to ftage me in their eyes :
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause, and Aves vehement :
Nor do I think the man of fafe difcretion,
That does affect it.

Ourfelf

Meafure for Measure, A. 1. Sc. 1.

POPULARITY.

Obferv'd his courtship to the common people :
How he did feem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy;

What reverence he did throw away on flaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of fmiles,
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench:

A brace of draymen, bid God speed him well!
And had the tribute of his fupple knee;

With -Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;
As were our England in reverfion his,

And he our fubjects next degree in hope.

King Richard 11. A. 1. Sc. 4.

It hath been taught us from the primal ftate,
That he which is, was wifh'd, until he were,
And the ebb'd man ne'er lov'd, till ne'er worth love,
Comes dear'd by being lack'd. This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,

Goes

Goes to and back, lackying the varying tide,
To rot itfelf with motion.

Antony and Cleopatra, A. 1. Sc. 4.

PORTIA S

PICTURE.

What find I. here!

Fair Portia's counterfeit. What demi-god
Hath come fo near creation? Move thefe eyes?
Or whether, riding on the balls of mine,
Seem they in motion? Here are fever'd lips
Parted with fugar breath; fo fweet a bar
Should funder fuch fweet friends: Here in her hairs
The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
A golden mesh t'intrap the hearts of men,
Fafter than gnats in cobwebs: But her eyes-
How could he fee to do them! Having made one,
Methinks it should have pow'r to steal both his,
And leave itself unfinish'd. Yet how far

The fubftance of my praise doth wrong this fhadow
In underprizing it! fo far this fhadow

Doth limp behind the fubftance.

The Merchant of Venice, A. 3. Sc. 2.

POVERTY.

(Exemplified in an Apothecary)

I do remember an apothecary,

And hereabouts he dwells-whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of fimples: meagre were his looks;
Sharp mifery had worn him to the bones;
And in his needy fhop a tortoife hung,
An alligator ftuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-fhap'd fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, bladders, and mufty feeds,
Remnants of pack thread, and old cakes of rofes,
Were thinly fcatter'd to make up a fhew.
Noting this penury, to myfelf I faid,
And if a man did need a poifon now,
Whofe fale is prefent death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would fell it him.
O! this fame thought did but forerun my need;
And this fame needy man must fell it me.

As

As I remember, this fhould be the house ;
Being holiday, the beggar's fhop is fliut.
What ho! Apothecary!

Romeo and Juliet, A. 3. Sc. 1.

Art thou fo bafe and full of wretchedness,
And fear'ft to die? Famine is in thy cheeks;
Need and oppreffion ftarveth in thine eyes;
Upon thy back hangs ragged mifery:

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich:
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

POWER O F LOVE.

But Love, firft learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain ;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as fwift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their office.
It adds a precious feeing to the eye:
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest found,
When the fufpicious head of thrift is ftopt.
Love's feeling is more foft and fenfible
Than are the tender horns of cockled fnails.
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus grofs in taste
For favour, is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hefperides ?

Subtle as Sphinx; as fweet and mufical
As bright Apolla's lute, ftrung with his hair:

And when Love fpeaks, the voice of all the gods:
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durft poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were temper'd with love's fighs:
O! then his lines would ravish favage ears,
And plant in tyrants, mild humanity.

Love's Labour Loft, A. 3.

PRAYER.

We, ignorant of ourselves,

Beg often our own harms, which the wife powers

Ibid.

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3.

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