It often falls, in course of common life,
That right long time is overborne of wrong,
Through avarice or power, or guile or strife,
That weakens her, and makes her party strong:
But justice, though her doom she do prolong,
Yet at the last she will her own cause right.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.
We have strict statutes, and most biting laws,
(The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds)
Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep;
Even like an overgrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey.
The good needs fear no law;
It is his safety, and the had man's awe.
Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley's Old Law
We are of the condition of some great
Men in office; that desire execution
Of the laws, not so much to correct offences
And reform the commonwealth, as to thrive
By their punishment, and grow rich and fat
With a clear conscience.
Shirley's St. Patrick for Ireland Strict laws are like steel bodice, good for growing limbs ;
But when the joints are knit, they are not helps, But burdens.
Fane's Love in the Dark
He that with injury is griev'd, And goes to law to be reliev'd, Is sillier than a sottish chouse,
Shaks. Mea. for Mea. Who, when a thief has robb'd his house,
Applies himself to cunning men,
To help him to his goods again.
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the nose.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea. Law does not put the least restraint
There is no power in Venice
Can alter a decree established:
"Twill be recorded for a precedent;
And many an error, by the same example,
Will rush into the state: it cannot be.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond, Thou but offend'st thy lungs to speak so loud. Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy
Upon a friend of mine, who, in hot blood,
Hath stept into the law, which is past depth
To those that without heed do plunge into it.
Shaks. Timon of Athens.
Multitude of laws are signs either of
Much tyranny in the prince, or much
Rebellious disobedience in the subject.
This wretch, that lov'd, before his food, his strife, Do not your juries give their verdict
This punishment falls even with his life;
His pleasure was vexation, all his bliss
The torment of another:
Their hurt his health, their starved hope his store;
Who so loves law, dies either mad or poor.
Middleton's Phonix.
If we offend the law,
The law may punish us; which only strives
To take away excess, not the necessity
Or use of what's indifferent: and is made
Or good or bad by 'ts use.
Nabb's Covent Garden.
As if they felt the cause, not heard it? And as they please, make matter of fact Run all on one side, as they 're pack'd.
Each state must have its policies;
Kingdoms have edicts, cities have their charters.
Ev'n the wild outlaw, in his forest walk,
Keeps yet some touch of civil discipline.
For not since Adam wore his verdant apron,
Hath man with man in social union dwelt,
But laws were made to draw that union closer
Old Play
Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as nature, and as fix'd as fate.
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle justice in her net of law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
Pope.
Once (says an author, where I need not say)
Two trav'llers found an oyster in their way:
Both fierce, both hungry, the dispute grew strong,
While, scale in hand, dame Justice pass'd along.
Before her each with clamour pleads the laws,
Explain'd the matter, and would win the cause.
Dame justice weighing long the doubtful right,
Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight.
The cause of strife remov'd so rarely well,
There take, (says Justice) take you each a shell,
We thrive at Westminster on fools like you:
"T was a fat oyster-live in peace — adieu.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Pope's Rape of the Lock.
Or, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer's share,
Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir;
Or in pure equity (the case not clear)
The chancery takes your rents for twenty year.
There was on both sides much to say:
He'd hear the cause another day.
And so he did; and then a third
He heard it there, he kept his word;
But with rejoinders or replies,
Long bills, and answers stuff'd with lies,
Demur, imparlance, and essoign,
The parties ne'er could issue join:
For sixteen years the cause was spun,
And then stood where it first begun.
LEARNING.
Hear him reason in divinity,
Pope. And, all-admiring, with an inward wish,
Swift's Cadenus and Vanessa. The laws have cast me off from every claim, Of house and kindred, and within my veins Turn'd noble blood to baseness and reproach: I'll cast them off; why should they be to me A bar, and no protection.
Learning was first made pilot to the world,
And in the chain of contemplation,
Many degrees above the burning clouds
He'd in his hands the nic-leaf'd marble book,
Drawn full of silver lines and golden stars.
Day's Law Tricks.
For mystic learning wondrous able In magic talisman and cabal, Whose primitive tradition reaches
As far as Adam's first green breeches.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater;
For he by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents, straight,
If bread or butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike, by algebra.
We grant, although he had much wit,
H' was very shy of using it,
As being loath to wear it out,
And therefore bore it not about:
Unless on holiday or so,
As men their best apparel do.
Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs do squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile,
Than to a black-bird 't is to whistle.
Learning, that cobweb of the brain
Profane, erroneous and vain;
A trade of knowledge as replete,
As others are with fraud and cheat;
An art t' incumber gifts and wit,
And render both for nothing fit.
But you are learn'd; in volumes deep you sit; In wisdom shallow: pompous ignorance!
Young's Night Thoughts.
You scorn what lies before you in the page
Of nature and experience, moral truth;
And dive in science for distinguish'd names,
Sinking in virtue as you rise in fame.
Young's Night Thoughts.
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Pope's Essay on Criticism,
By learning unrefin'd
That oft enlightens to corrupt the mind,
Falconer's Shipwreck.
Whose modest wisdom, therefore, never aims
To find the longitude, or burn the Thames.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters to be wise;
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail;
See nations slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. Au reste, (as we say,) the young lad's well enough, Only talks much of Athens, Rome, virtue, and stuff Moore's Fudge Family
Where yonder humble spire salutes the eye,
Its vane slow-turning in the liquid sky,
Where, in light gambols, healthy striplings sport,
Ambitious Learning builds her outer court.
Her book of light here learning spread;
Butler's Hudibras. Here the warm breast of youth
Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words That ever blotted paper!
You ask my friend, and well you may,
You ask me how I spend my day;
I'll tell you, in unstudied rhyme,
How wisely I befool my time;
These idle lines- they might be worse-
Are simple prose, in simple verse.
James Montgomery
I have seen him when he hath had
A letter from his lady dear, he bless'd
The paper that her hand had travell'd over,
And her eye look'd on, and would think he saw
Gleams of the light she lavish'd from her eyes,
Wandering amid the words of love there trac'd
Like glow-worms among beds of flowers.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice. Do you like letter-reading? If you do,
I have some twenty dozen very pretty ones: Gay, sober, rapturous, solemn, very true, And very lying stupid ones, and witty ones; On gilt-edged paper, blue perhaps, or pink, And frequently in fancy-coloured ink.
Epes Sargent Through her tears she gazed upon them,
Records of that brief bright dream! And she clasped them closer closerFor a message they would seem,
Shaks. Henry V. Coming from the lips now silent,
Butler's Hudibras.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love in-
spires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.
Pope's Eloisa.
A letter, too, she gave (he never read it)
Of good advice and two or three of credit.
Coming from a hand now cold, And she felt the same emotion They had thrill'd her with of old.
She had waited for their coming,
She had kiss'd them o'er and o'er-
And they were so fondly treasured
For the words of love they bore,
Words that whisper'd in the silence,
She had listen'd till his tone
Seem'd to linger in the echo
Lucio. Whence comes this restraint?
'Tis not to stalk about, and draw fresh air From time to time, or gaze upon the sun:
Claudio.-From too much liberty, my Lucio, "T is to be free. When liberty is gone,
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint: our natures do pursue
(Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,)
A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.
O happy men born under good stars,
Where what is honest you may freely think,
Speak what you think, and write what you do speak;
Not bound to servile soothings.
Life grows insipid, and has lost its relish
Let abject cowards live; but in the brave It were a treachery to themselves, enough To merit chains.
The greatest glory of a free-born people,
Is to transmit that freedom to their children.
Havard's Regulus.
Marston's Fawn. Converse familiar with th' illustrious dead:
With great examples of old Greece or Rome;
Enlarge thy free-born heart, and bless kind heaven
That Britain yet enjoys dear liberty,
When we have lost the substance, is best kept,
By seeming not to understand those faults,
Which we want power to mend.
May's Cleopatra.
If we retain the glory of our ancestors,
Whose ashes will rise up against our dulness,
Shake off our tameness, and give way to courage;
We need not doubt, inspir'd with a just rage,
To break the necks of those that would yoke ours.
Tatham's Distracted State.
I love my freedom: yet strong prisons can
Vex but the bad, and not the virtuous man.
Oh! give me liberty!
For were ev'n paradise my prison,
Still I should long to leap the crystal walls.
Dryden's Don Sebastian.
The love of liberty with life is given,
And life itself th' inferior gift of heaven.
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
Oh, liberty, thou goddess, heavenly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train;
Fas'd of her load, subjection grows more light,
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
Addison's Italy.
A day, an hour of virtuous liberty,
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
Addison's Cato.
That balm of life, that sweetest blessing, cheap, Tho' purchased with our blood.
Parent of happiness, celestial-born;
When the first man became a living soul,
His sacred genius thou.
Dyer's Ruins of Rome.
Mankind are all by nature free and equal,
'Tis their consent alone gives just dominion.
Duncombe's Junius Brutus.
O liberty! heav'n's choice prerogative!
True bond of law! thou social soul of property!
Thou breath of reason! life of life itself!
For thee the valiant bleed. O sacred liberty!
Wing'd from the summer's snare, from flattering
ruin,
Like the bold stork you seek the wint'ry shore,
Leave courts, and pomps, and palaces to slaves,
Cleave to the cold, and rest upon the storm.
Brooke's Gustavus Vasa
Freedom is
The brilliant gift of heav'n, 'tis reason's self,
The kin of deity.
What are fifty, what a thousand slaves,
Match'd to the sinew of a single arm
That strikes for liberty?
Brooke's Gustavus Vasa
Oh could I worship aught beneath the skies,
That earth hath seen or fancy can devise,
Thine altar, sacred liberty, should stand,
Built by no mercenary vulgar hand,
With fragrant turf, and flowers as wild and fair
As ever dress'd a bank or scented sunimer air.
Cowper's Charity.
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