Blair.

THE GRAVE.

The Grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou'rt named; Nature, appall'd,

Shakes off her wonted firmness.

Lines 9-11.

Oft in the lone church-yard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonshine, chequ'ring through the trees,
The school-boy, with his satchel in his hand,

Whistling aloud to bear his courage up.

Lines 56-59.

Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweet'ner of life! and solder of society!

Lines 88, 89.

Of joys departed,

Not to return, how painful the remembrance!

Lines 109, 110.

If death were nothing, and nought after death;
If when men died, at once they ceas'd to be,
Returning to the barren womb of nothing,

Whence first they sprung, then might the debauchee, Untrembling, mouth the heavens; then might the drunkard

Reel over his full bowl, and when 'tis drained,

Fill up another to the brim, and laugh

At the poor bugbear Death.

Lines 382-389.

Self-murder! name it not; our island's shame ;

That makes her the reproach of neighb'ring states.
Lines 403, 404.

The good he scorn'd,

Stalk'd off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost

Not to return; or, if it did, its visits

Like those of angels, short and far between.*

Lines 586-589.

* "Like angel-visits, few and far between." See Quotations from Campbell.

You are not like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once,

are you?

The Rivals. Act iv.

Scene 2.

The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands.

My valour is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my

Act v. Scene 3.

Ibid.

When you shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.

School for Scandal. Act 1.

Scene I.

I'm called away by particular business, but I leave my character behind me.

Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen ;
Here's to the widow of fifty;

Here's to the flaunting extravagant quean;
And here's to the housewife that's thrifty.
Let the toast pass;

Drink to the lass

I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass.

Prior.

-000

No longer shall the boddice aptly laced,
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist,
That air and harmony of shape express,

Fine by degrees and beautifully less.*

Henry and Emma. Lines 427-430.

Variety alone gives joy,

The sweetest meats the soonest cloy.

The Turtle and Sparrow. Lines 232, 233.

Be to her virtues very kind,

Be to her faults a little blind.

An English Padlock. Concluding Lines.

* This line is, in most cases where it is used, given wrongly thus

"Small by degrees and beautifully less."

Pope has a somewhat similar line in Moral Essays, Epistle ii., line 43

"Fine by defect, and delicately weak."