Fashion, leader of a chatt'ring train,
Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign,
Who shifts and changes all things but his shape,
And would degrade her vot'ry to an ape,
The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong,
Holds a usurp'd dominion o'er his tongue,
There sits and prompts him with his own disgrace,
Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace,
And when accomplish'd in her wayward school,
Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool.
Cowper's Conversation.
In the great world—which being interpreted
Meaneth the west or worst end of a city,
And about twice two thousand people bred
By no means to be very wise or witty,
But to sit up while others lie in bed,
And look down on the universe with pity,-
Juan, as an inveterate patrician,
Was well received by persons of condition.
What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III
Or surest hand, can always hit ;
Success, the mark no mortal wit,
For whatsoe'er we perpetrate,
We do but row; we 're steer'd by fate,
Which in success oft disinherits,
For spurious causes, noblest merits.
Butler's Hudibras. On what strange grounds we build our hopes and fears!
Man's life is all a mist, and in the dark
Our fortunes meet us.
If fate be not, then what can we foresee?
And how can we avoid it if it be?
If by free will in our own paths we move,
How are we bounded by decrees above?
Whether we drive, or whether we are driven,
If ill, 't is ours; if good, the act of heav'n.
Alas, what stay is there in human state,
Or who can shun inevitable fate?
The doom was written, the decree was past,
Ere the foundations of the world were cast.
Dryden.
The gods are just;
But how can finite measure infinite?
Whatever is, is in its causes just,
Since all things are by fate, but poor blind man
Sees but a part o' th' chain, the nearest link,
His not carrying to that equal beam
That poises all above.
"Tis ever thus when favours are denied:
All had been granted but the thing we beg,
And still some great unlikely substitute,
Your life, your souls, your all of earthly good,
Is proffer'd in the room of one small boon.
Joanna Baillie's Basi
No trifle is so small as what obtains,
Dryden. Save that which loses favour; 't is a breath
Which hangs upon a smile! a look, a word,
A frown, the air-built tower of fortune shakes,
And down the unsubstantial fabric falls.
That did not fashion me for nobler uses;
For if those stars, cross to me in my birth,
Had not denied their prosperous influence to it,
I might have ceased to be, and not as now
'To curse my being.
Man, tho' limited
By fate, may vainly think his actions frce,
While all he does, was, at his hour of birth,
Or by his gods, or potent stars, ordain'd.
Rowe's Royal Convert.
While warmer souls command, nay, make their
Thy fate made thee, and forc'd thee to be great.
But Fate whirls on the bark,
And the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide
The lazy calm of thought.
Next him was fear, all arm'd from top to toe,
Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby,
But fear'd each shadow moving to or fro,
And his own arms when glittering he did spy,
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly;
As ashes pale of hue, and winged heel'd,
And evermore on danger fixt his eye,
'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield,
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
His hand did quake
And tremble like a leaf of aspen green,
And troubled blood through his pale face was seen,
Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer. As it a running messenger had been.
O momentary grace of mortal man,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God,
Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast;
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.
Shaks. Richard III.
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
Still as he fled his eye was backward cast,
As if his fear still follow'd him behind,
Als flew his steed as he his bands had brast,
And with his winged heels did tread the wind
As he had been a foal of Pegasus his kind.
Spenser's Fairy Queen,
You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think you can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine are blanch'd with fear.
I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
Shaks. Henry VIII. To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in 't: I have supp'd full of horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
'Tis the curse of service;
Preferment goes by letter, and affection,
Not by the old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first.
She may help you to many fair preferments;
And then deny her aiding hand therein,
And lay those honours on your high descent.
Shaks. Richard III.
Whence is that knocking!
How is 't with me, when every noise appals me?
Shaks. Macbeth.
Accurred be the tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
Shaks. Macbeth.
His horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature.
Shaks. Macbeth.
Why what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal.
The clouds dispell'd, the sky resum'd her light,
And nature stood recover'd of her fright.
But fear, the last of ills, remain'd behind,
And horror heavy sat on every mind.
Dryden's Theodore and Honoria
When the sun sets, shadows that show'd at noon
But small, appear most long and terrible:
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds;
Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death:
Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons.
Echoes, the very leaving of a voice,
Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves.
Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus,
Shaks. Hamlet. While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff,
And sweat with an imagination's weight.
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their
spheres ;
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
Shaks. Hamlet.
Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me,
For I am sick and capable of fears;
Oppress'd with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears;
And though thou now confess, thou didst but jest,
With my vex'd spirits I cannot take a truce,
But they will quake and tremble all this day.
Shaks. King John.
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Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
Thomson's Seasons
The wretch that fears to drown, will break through
flames;
Or, in his dread of flames, will plunge in waves
When cagles are in view, the screaming doves
Will cower beneath the feet of man for safety.
Cibber's Cæsar in Egypt
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Pope's Eloisa.
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance,
To arms! cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quiver.
ing lance.
Gray's Bard
Fear on guilt attends, and deeds of darkness;
The virtuous breast ne'er knows it.
Havard's Scanderbeg
The weakness we lament, ourselves create.
Instructed from our infant years to court,
With counterfeited fears, the aid of man,
We learn to shudder at the rustling breeze,
Start at the light, and tremble in the dark,
Till affectation, rip'ning to belief
And folly, frighted at our own chimeras,
Habitual cowardice usurps the soul.
First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewilder'd laid,
And back recoil'd, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made.
Collins's Passiona
Must I consume my life-this little life-
In guarding against all may make it less?
It is not worth so much! It were to die
Before my hour, to live in dread of death.
The dread of evil is the worst of ill;
A tyrant yet a rebel, dragging down
The clear-eyed judgment from its spiritual throne,
And leagu'd with all the base and blacker thoughts,
To overwhelm the soul.
Proctor's Mirandola.
"Tis well-my soul shakes off its load of care;
'Tis only the obscure is terrible.
Imagination frames events unknown,
In wild fantastic shapes of hideous ruin;
And what it fears creates !
Hannah More's Belshazzar.
What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not;
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!
Like one, that on a lonesome road
Not all on books their criticism waste:
The genius of a dish some justly taste,
And eat their way to fame.
Young's Love of Fame.
Their various cares in one great point combine
The business of their lives, that is- -to dine.
Young's Love of Fame.
Sir Balaam now, he lives like other folks,
He takes his chirping pint, and cracks his jokes:
"Live like yourself," was soon my lady's word;
And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.
Pope's Moral Essays.
- Mingles with the friendly bowl The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
Was ever such a happy swain!
Wordsworth. He stuffs and swills, and stuffs again.
"I'm quite asham'd-'tis mighty rude
"To eat so much—but all's so good!
"I have a thousand thanks to give-
"My lord alone knows how to live."
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner.
And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak!
Shelley.
Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness.
The workings of the soul ye fear;
Ye fear the power that goodness hath;
Ye fear the unseen One ever near,
Walking his ocean path.
Dana's Buccaneer. Hast thou learn'd to doubt professions, and distrust The word of promise?-if not so, the world has been more just
The night came on alone,
The little stars sat one by one
Each on his golden throne;
The evening air pass'd by my cheek,
The leaves above were stirr'd,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
FEASTING.
Then all was jollity,
The turnpike road to people's hearts I find
Lies through their mouths, or I mistake mankind.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
Behold! his breakfasts shine with reputation!
His dinners are the wonder of the nation!
With these he treats both commoners and quality,
Who praise, where'er they go, his hospitality.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
Dire was the clang of plates, of knife and fork,
That merc'less fell like tomahawks to work.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
Ven'son's a Cæsar in the fiercest fray;
Turtle! an Alexander in its way;
And then in quarrels of a slighter nature,
R. M. Milnes. Mutton's a most successful mediator!
So much superior is the stomach's smart
To all the vaunted horrors of the heart;
E'en love, who often triumphs in his grief,
Hath ceas'd to feed on sighs, to pant on beef.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
Feasting and mirth, light wantonness and laugh
Piping and playing, minstrelsies and masking,
"Till life fled from us like an idle dream;
A show of mummery without a meaning.
I own that nothing like good cheer succeeds
A man's a god whose hogshead freely bleeds;
Champaigne can consecrate the damnedst evil;
A hungry parasite adores a devil.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar
FEATURES-FEELING-FESTIVITY-FICKLENESS - FIDELITY.
Heap on more wood! the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Scott's Marmion. Fill the bright goblet, spread the festive board; Summon the gay, the noble and the fair! Through the loud hall in joyous concert pour'd, Let mirth and music sound the dirge of care! But ask thou not if happiness be there,
If the loud laugh disguise convulsive throe,
Or if the brow the heart's true living wear;
Lift not the festal mask!-enough to know,
No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.
Scott's Lord of the Isles.
But 't was a public feast, and public day—
Quite full, right dull, guests hot, and dishes cold,
Great plenty, much formality, small cheer,
And every body out of their own sphere.
When dinner has opprest one, I think it is perhaps the gloomiest hour Which turns up out of the sad twenty-four.
Of all appeals- although
I grant the power of pathos, and of gold,
Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling-no
Method's more sure at moments to take hold
Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
More tender, as we every day behold,
Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul-the dinner-bell.
Fill full; why this is as it should be: here
Is my true realm, amidst bright eyes and faces
Happy as fair! here sorrow cannot reach.
Thou shalt not see me blush, Nor change my countenance for this arrest; A heart unspotted is not easily daunted. The purest spring is not so free from mud, As I am clear from treason to my sovereign. Shaks. Henry VI. Part II.
I have this day receiv'd a traitor's judgment,
And by that name must die; yet, heaven bear
witness,
And if I have a conscience, let it sink me,
Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful!
Shaks. Henry VIII
Though all the world should crack their duty to
you,
And throw it from their soul; though perils did
Abound, as thick as thought could make them, and
Appear in forms more horrid; yet my duty
As doth a rock against a chiding flood,
Should the approach of the wild river break,
And stand unshaken yours.
I always give in poetry, well knowing
That to jump over it in half a line,
Looks (let us be sincere, dear muse!) like showing
Contempt we do not feel for meat and wine.
Dinner! ye gods! What is there more respectable! Still met the king? lov'd him next heaven? obey'
For eating who, save Byron, ever check'd a helle.
-A good rule at parties, (to keep up a Mercurial air,) is to come in at supper.
Have I with all my full affections
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