The means of weakness and debility:
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.

For my means, I'll husband them so well,
They shall go far with little.

471.

Circumspection in bounty.

'Tis pity, bounty had not eyes behind;

10-ii. 3.

36-iv. 5.

That man might ne'er be wretched for his mind.

472.

27-i. 2.

Forethought.

Determine on some course,

28-iv. 1.

More than a wild exposure to each chance
That starts i' the way before thee.

Since the affairs of men rest still uncertain,

Let's reason with the worst that may befall. 29—v. 1.

474.

The necessity of forethought.

In whose breast

Doubt and suspect, alas, are placed too late: You should have fear'd false times, when you did feast:

Suspect still comes, where an estate is least. 27—iv. 3.

It is the witness still of excellency,

To put a strange face on his own perfection. 6—ii. 3.

Can it be,

That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness?

5-ii. 2.

Thou art, alone,

(If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,

Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,—
Obeying in commanding, and thy parts

Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)
The queen of earthly queens.

478.

Desirableness of meekness.

Who should study to prefer a peace,

25-ii. 4.

If holy churchmen take delight in broils? 21-iii. 1.

Blessed be those,

How mean soe'er, that have their honest wills,
Which seasons comfort.

480.

Contentment, its happiness.

"T is better to be lowly born,

And range with humble livers in content,

Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

481.

The wisdom of concealment.

I will keep her ignorant of her good,

To make her heavenly comforts of despair
When it is least expected.

31-i. 7.

25-ii. 3.

5-iv. 3.

The time will bring on summer,

When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,
And be as sweet as sharp m.

483.

Want of resignation.

God is much displeased,

That you take with unthankfulness his doing;
In common worldly things, 't is call'd-ungrateful,
With dull unwillingness to repay a debt,
Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;
Much more to be thus opposite with heaven,
For it requires the debt it lent you".

24-ii. 2.

1 "Godliness with contentment is great gain."-1 Tim. vi. 6. m As briars have sweetness with their prickles, so shall troubles be recompensed with joy.

n

"And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."Job. i. 21.

Ask God for temperance; that's the appliance only, Which your disease requires.

25-i. 1.

My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear;
And I will stoop and humble my intents

To your well-practised, wise directions.

19-v. 2.

Through flinty Tartar's bosom would peep forth,
And answer, thanks.

It so falls out,

11—iv. 4.

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack P the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not shew us
Whiles it was ours.

A pack of blessings lights upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.

6-iv. 1.

35-iii. 3.

489. Blessings undervalued, till irrecoverable.

Love, that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,
To the great sender turns a sour offence,

Crying, That 's good that 's gone: our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them, until we know their grave:
Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,
Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust.

• While.

P Overrate.

11-v. 3.

490.

Evils, wrongly ascribed to Heaven.

This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers 9, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on".

* 491.

The apprehension of evils.

Doubting things go ill, often hurts more
Than to be sure they do: For certainties

34-i. 2.

Either are past remedies: or, timely knowing,
The remedy then born.

To fly the boar before the boar pursues,
Were to incense the boar to follow us,

31-i. 7.

And make pursuit, where he did mean no chase.

493.

24-iii. 2.

The consequences of evil.
We bid ill be done,

When evil deeds have their permissive pass,
And not the punishment.

5-i. 4.

494. Troubles aggravated by the view of what
would relieve them.

"T is double death to drown in ken of shore:
He ten times pines, that pines beholding food:
To see the salve, doth make the wound ache more;
Great grief grieves most at that would do it good:
Deep woes roll forward like a gentle flood,

Who, being stopp'd, the bounding banks o'erflows;
Grief dallied with, nor law nor limits knows. Poems.

The poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

¶ Traitors.

5-iii. 1.

* James i. 3, 4.

496. Sufferings softened by sympathy. When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers, suffers most i' the mind; Leaving free things, and happy shows, behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.

34-iii. 6.

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

Sleep, when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish?

Fish not with this melancholy bait,

For this fool's gudgeon, this opinion.

499.

The power of melancholy.

O hateful Error, Melancholy's child!

9-i. 1.

9-i. 1.

Why dost thou shew to the apt thoughts of men The things that are not? O Error, soon conceived, Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,

But kill'st the mother that engender'd thee. 29-v. 3.

500. Recreation, a preventive of melancholy.

Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue,
But moody and dull Melancholy,
(Kinsman to grim and comfortless Despair;)
And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life?

Grief boundeth where it falls,

14-v. 1.

Not with the empty hollowness, but weightt. 17-i. 2.

502. Grief in experience and inexperience.

True grief is fond, and testy as a child,

⚫ States clear from distress.

That is, no griefs, evidently affected, have a sympathetic influence by re-action upon others. The conceit is from a ball contrasted to a bladder.