286.

Timidity, incapable of adventure.

Impossible be strange attempts, to those

That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose,
What hath been cannot bed.

287.

Nature content with little.

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.

11-i. 1.

288.

34-ii. 4.

Nature, its weakness.

Strange it is,

30-v. 1.

That nature must compel us to lament
Our most persisted deeds.

289.

Nature, oft perverted by man.

O, mickle is the powerful gracee, that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile, that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometime 's by action dignified. 35—ii. 3. 290.

The mirror of nature.

Hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. 36-iii. 2.

291.

Natural defects impair virtues.

Oft it chances in particular men,

That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,)

By the o'ergrowth of some complexiong,

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;

New attempts seem impossible to those who estimate their labour or enterprises by sense, and believe that nothing can be but what they see before them.

• Virtue. f Impression, resemblance.

8 Humour.

Or by some habit, that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners;-that these men,—
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's starb,-
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance often douti,
To his own scandalk.

292.

Virtue and knowledge.

I held it ever,

36-i. 4.

Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs

May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.

293. Knowledge gained by experience.

Our courtiers say, all 's savage but at court:
Experience, O, thou disprov'st report!

33-iii. 2.

The imperious seas breed monsters; for the dish,

Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.

294. Knowledge to govern ourselves.

31-iv. 2.

Let's teach ourselves. Ah, honourable stop,
Not to outsport discretion.

37-ii. 3.

295.

Chastity.

The heavens hold firm

31-ii. 1.

The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshaked
That temple, thy fair mind.

Virtue, that transgresses, is but patched with sin; and sin, that amends, is but patched with virtue.

4-i. 5.

i Do out.

h Star, signifies a scar of that appearance. k "Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed."-Eccles.

Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast,
Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last.

33-v. 3

O infinite virtue! com'st thou smiling from
The world's great snare uncaught?

30-iv. 8.

The honour of a maid is her name; and no legacy

is so rich as honesty.

11-iii. 5.

300. The praise of virtue consists in action.

Remuneration for the thing it was!

O, let not virtue seek

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:

26-iii. 3.

Some run from brakes" of vice, and answer none;
And some condemned for a fault alone.

5-ii. 1.

302.

Virtue contrasted with vice.

What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted?
Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

303.

Virtue and vice, their influence.

Virtue, as it never will be moved,

22-iii. 2.

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,

""Brakes of vice," means the engine of torture. In Holinshed, p. 670, it is mentioned, "the said Hawkins was cast into the Tower, and at length brought to the brake," &c. This engine is still to be seen in the Tower.

304. Love, in its spring and in its maturity.

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;

I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days;
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

305.

Poems.

Love.

Love is not love,

When it is mingled with respects P, that stand
Aloof from the entire point 9.

306.

Love elevates and refines.

34-i. 1.

Base men, being in love, have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them. 37-ii. 1.

Nature is fine in love: and, where 't is fine,

It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves".

308. Love betrays itself like murder.

36-iv. 5.

A murd'rous guilt shews not itself more soon,

Than love that would seem hid: love's night is noon.

• Satiate.

4-iii. 2.

Pi. e. With cautious and prudential considerations.

"Who seeks for aught in love but love alone?"

I Love is the passion by which nature is most exalted and refined; and as substances refined and subtilized easily obey any impulse, or follow any attraction, some part of nature, so purified and refined, flies off after the attracting object, after the thing it loves.

The ostent of our love, which, left unshewn,

Is often left unloved.

310.

Love, its dereliction.

30-iii. 6.

Sweet love, changing his property,

Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate. 17—iii. 2.

This is the very ecstasy of love,

Whose violent property foredoest itself,

And leads the will to desperate undertakings,
As oft as any passion under heaven,

That does afflict our natures.

36-ii. 1.

This is the monstruosity in love,—that the will is infinite, and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit. 26-iii. 2.

313.

Decaying nature of love.

There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;

And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,

Dies in his own too-much.

314.

Decaying love, its effects.

When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.

36-iv. 7.

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith:
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle:
But, when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial.

29-iv. 2.

The service of the foot

Being once gangren'd, is not then respected

For what before it was.

28-iii. I.