The boldest language: such a one I am, Is true love's merit, and bless me with a sign Of thy great pleasure! [Here music is heard, doves are seen to flutter; they fall again upon their faces, then on their knees. O thou that from eleven to ninety reignest [They bow, then exeunt. Still music of records. Enter EMILIA in white, her hair about her shoulders, and wearing a wheaten wreath; one in white holding up her train, her hair stuck with flowers; one before her carrying a silver hind, in which is conveyed incense and sweet odors, which being set upon the altar of Diana, her Maids standing aloof, she sets fire to it; then they courtesy and kneel. O sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant queen, But maiden-hearted; a husband I have pointed,2 Were I to lose one-thev are equal precious – I could doom neither; that which perished should And has the truest title in't, let him Take off my wheaten garland, or else grant Continue in thy band. [Here the hind vanishes under the altar, and in the place ascends a rose tree having one rose upon it. See what our general of ebbs and flows 2 With sacred act advances! But one rose ! If well inspired, this battle shall confound Both these brave knights, and I, a virgin flower, Must grow alone, unplucked. [Here is heard a sudden twang of instruments, and the rose falls from the tree, which vanishes under the altar. O mistress, The flower is fallen, the tree descends! [They courtesy, and exeunt. 1 Suitors. LOVE'S VITALITY. BY MICHAEL DRAYTON [1563-1631.] SINCE there's no hope, come, let us kiss and part, — Be it not seen in either of our brows, That we one jot of former love retain; Now, at the last gasp of Love's failing breath, 2 Refers to the moon (Diana) as ruler of the tides. EXPLORATA; OR, DISCOVERIES. BY BEN JONSON. (From "Timber.") [For biographical sketch, see page 2616.] ILL fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not. I therefore have counseled my friends never to trust to her fairer side, though she seemed to make peace with them; but to place all things she gave them so, as she might ask them again without their trouble; she might take them from them, not pull them to keep always a distance between her and themselves. He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man. Contraries are not mixed. Yet that which happens to any man may to every man. is in his reason, what he accounts it and will make it. But it No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise but may easily err, if he will take no others' counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master. A fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by another's apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well themselves. Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him he is not easily emergent. In great affairs it is a work of difficulty to please all. And ofttimes we lose the occasion of carrying a business well and thoroughly by our too much haste. For passions are spiritual rebels, and raise sedition against the understanding. Natures that are hardened to evil you shall sooner break than make straight; they are like poles that are crooked and dry, there is no attempting them. We praise the things we hear with much more willingness than those we see, because we envy the present and reverence the past; thinking ourselves instructed by the one, and overlaid by the other. Impostura. Many men believe not themselves what they would persuade others; and less do the things which they would impose on others; but least of all know what they themselves most confidently boast. Only they set the sign of the cross over their outer doors, and sacrifice to their gut and their groin in their inner closets. Scientiæ liberales non vulgi sunt. Arts that respect the mind were ever reputed nobler than those that serve the body, though we less can be without them, as tillage, spinning, weaving, building, etc., without which we could scarce sustain life a day. But these were the works of every hand; the other of the brain only, and those the most generous and exalted wits and spirits, that cannot rest or acquiesce. The mind of man is still fed with labor: Opere pascitur. There is a more secret cause, and the power of liberal studies lies more hid, than that it can be wrought out by profane wits. It is not every man's way to hit. There are men, I confess, that set the carat and value upon things as they love them; but science is not every man's mistress. It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature. Affliction teacheth a wicked person sometime to pray: prosperity never. Latro sesquipedalis. — The thief that had a longing at the gallows to commit one robbery more before he was hanged. And like the German lord, when he went out of Newgate into the cart, took order to have his arms set up in his last herborough said he was taken and committed upon suspicion of treason, no witness appearing against him; but the judges entertained him most civilly, discoursed with him, offered him the courtesy of the rack; but he confessed, etc. Envy is no new thing, nor was it born only in our times. The ages past have brought it forth, and the coming ages will. So long as there are men fit for it, it will never be wanting. It is a barbarous envy, to take from those men's virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou impotently despairest to imitate. Is it a crime in me that I know that which others had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of many things which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught them? It is a new but a foolish way you have found out, that whom you cannot equal or come near in doing, you would destroy or ruin with evil speaking; as if you had bound both your wits and natures prentices to slander, and then came forth the best artificers when you could form the foulest calumnies. Hearsay news. That an elephant, in 1630, came hither ambassador from the Great Mogul, who could both write and read, and was every day allowed twelve cast of bread, twenty quarts of Canary sack, besides nuts and almonds the citizens' wives sent him. That he had a Spanish boy to his interpreter, and his chief negotiation was to confer or practice with Archy, the principal fool of state, about stealing hence Windsor Castle and carrying it away on his back if he can. Acutius cernuntur vitia quam virtutes. — There is almost no man but he sees clearlier and sharper the vices in a speaker, than the virtues. And there are many, that with more ease will find fault with what is spoken foolishly than can give allowance to that wherein you are wise silently. The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic poet; and it appears not in anything more than in that nation, whereof one, when he had got the inheritance of an unlucky old grange, would needs sell it; and to draw buyers proclaimed the virtues of it. 66 Nothing ever thrived on it," saith he. "No owner of it ever died in his bed; some hung, some drowned themselves; some were banished, some starved; the trees were all blasted; the swine died of the measles, the cattle of the murrain, the sheep of the rot; they that stood were ragged, bare, and bald as your hand; nothing was ever reared there, not a duckling, or a goose." Was not this man like to sell it? Amor et odium. - Love that is ignorant, and hatred, have almost the same ends. Many foolish lovers wish the same to their friends, which their enemies would: as to wish a friend. banished, that they might accompany him in exile; or some great want, that they might relieve him; or a disease, that they might sit by him. They make a causeway to their courtesy by injury, as if it were not honester to do nothing than to seek a way to do good by a mischief. Injuria. Injuries do not extinguish courtesies: they only suffer them not to appear fair. For a man that doth me an injury after a courtesy, takes not away the courtesy, but defaces it as he that writes other verses upon my verses, takes not away the first letters, but hides them. Beneficia. Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our boats; or winds, that they be favoring and |