The sleeping, and the dead,

Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood,
That fears a painted devil.

310

The variableness of mankind.

15—ii. 2.

The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then
We pout upon the morning, are unapt
To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff'd
These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood,
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls
Than in our priest-like fasts.
28-v. 1.

311

Confident security dangerous.

The wound of peace is surety,

Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd

The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst.

26-ii. 2.

Sweet love, changing his property,

Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.

With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves?

What viler thing upon the earth, than friends,
Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!

5-ii. 2.

27-iv. 3.

317

Retribution.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.*

34-y. 3. 318

Sorrow.

Our size of sorrow, Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great As that which makes it.

30-iv. 13.

319

Time, its fleetness.

It is ten o'clock:
Thus may we see, how the world wags :
'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
And after an hour more 'twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.

10_ii. 7. 320

Wickedness, its own reward.
What mischiefs work the wicked ones;
Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!

22-ii. 1. 321

Earthly glory.
O mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure ?

29-iii. 1.

322

Contention.
When two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 'twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.

28-iii. 1. 323

God's procedure. You snatch some hence for little faults; that's love, To have them fall no more ; you some permit To second ills with ills, each elder worse ; And make them dread it to the doers' thrift.

31-v. 1. 324

Omnipotence. Can we outrun the heavens ?'

325

Crime revealed.

Blood will have blood : Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret'st man of blood.

15-iii. 4. 326

Fear.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard.

22_V. 2. 327

Circumspection in bounty. 'Tis pity, bounty had not eyes behind; That man might ne'er be wretched for his mind.

27-i. 2. 328

Discretion of age. 'Tis not good that children should know any wickedness: old folks have discretion, as they say, and know the world.

3-ii. 2. 329

Fortitude.

Yield not thy neck To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind Still ride in triumph over all mischance. 23-iii. 3. 330

Patience. With patience calm the storm. 23-iii. 3. 331

Gifts bartered.

There's none Can truly say, he gives, if he receives. 27-i. 2. 332

Envy. That monster Envy, oft the wrack Of earned praise.

33_iv. 1. 333

Human life.

Reason thus with life:

A breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences)
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet run'st toward him still: Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means

valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st.

Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust : Happy thou art not:
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain ;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,*
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee: Friends hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo,t and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth, nor

age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld ;f and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear.

5-iii. 1. 334

Intemperance, the evil of it.

Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.

15-iv. 3. 335

Avarice. How quickly nature falls into revolt, When gold becomes her object ! For this, the foolish over-careful fathers Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with Their bones with industry :

(care,

For this, they have engross'd and piled up
The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts, and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, tolling* from every flower
The virtuous sweets;

Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive; and, like the bees,
Are murder'd for our pains.

How sour sweet music is,

When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

338

Jests misplaced may be fatal.

His jest will savour but of shallow wit,

19-iv. 4.

17-v. 5.

29-ii. 2.

When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.

339

Simplicity in pleasing.

20-i. 2.

That sport best pleases, that doth least know how:
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Die in the zeal of them which it presents,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;
When great things labouring perish in their birth.

340

8-v. 2.

Satiety.

The cloy'd will,

(That satiate yet unsatisfied desire,

That tub both fill'd and running,) ravening first
The lamb, longs after for the garbage.

31-i. 7.