BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.- SHIRLEY. 153 Of all the paths lead to a woman's love Pity's the straightest.' The Knight of Malta. Act i. Sc. 1. But the eternal substance of his greatness; To which I leave him. The False One. Act ii. Sc. 1. Thou wilt scarce be a man before thy mother.2 What's one man's poison, signor, Love's Cure. Act ii. Sc. 2. Act iii. Sc. 2. The Two Noble Kinsmen. Act i. Sc. 1. O great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o'er-rank states, thou grand decider Act v. Sc. 1. JAMES SHIRLEY. 1596-1666. The glories of our blood and state Death lays his icy hands on kings. Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Sc. 3. Only the actions of the just 3 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.* Death calls ye to the crowd of common men. Ibid. Cupid and Death. 1 Compare Southerne. Page 243. Also Young. Page 264. 2 Compare Cowper. Page 366. 3 Compare Tate and Brady. Page 619. ✦ 'their dust.' —Works, ed. Dyce, Vol. vi. JOHN KEPLER. 1571-1630. It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer. Brewster's Martyrs of Science, p. 197. Whose life is a bubble, and in length a span.2 What care I how fair she be? 1 The Shepherd's Resolution. Jack shall pipe, and Gill shall dance. For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools. The Leviathan. Part i. Ch. 4. And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. 1 Compare Raleigh. Page 14. Ch. 13. JOHN SELDEN. 1584-1654. Equity is a roguish thing: for Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. "T is all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a Foot a Chancellor's Foot; what an uncertain measure would this be? One Chancellor has a long Foot, another a short Foot, a third an indifferent Foot. 'T is the same thing in the Chancellor's conscience. Table Talk. Equity. Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet. Friends. Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet everybody is content to hear. Humility. Commonly we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide. No man is the wiser for his learning; wisdom are born with a man. Judgments. wit and Learning. Take a straw and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is. Libels. Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.1 Syllables govern the world. Pope. Power. 1 Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed. Oxenstiern (1583-1654). IZAAK WALTON. 1593-1683. Of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge. The Complete Angler. Author's Preface. Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt. Ibid. As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler. Ibid. I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that, if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a fishing. I am, Sir, a Brother of the Angle. Ibid. Part i. Ch. 1. Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so. Ibid. I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, That which is everybody's business is nobody's business. Part i. Ch. 2. Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good. Part i. Ch. 4. No man can lose what he never had. Part i. Ch. 5. We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a 1 William Butler, styled by Dr. Fuller in his Worthies (Suffolk) the "Esculapius of our age." He died in 1621. This first appeared in the second edition of The Angler, 1655. Roger Williams, in his Key into the Language of America, 1643, p. 98, says: "One of the chiefest doctors of England was wont to say, that God could have made, but God never did make, a better berry." |