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The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

How far the little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

-Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than in use: keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key; be check'd for silence,
But never task'd for speech.

The cloudeapp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit shall dissolve;
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leave not a wreck behind! We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail; and that should teach us, There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Roughhew them how we will.

The Poet's eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,

Doth glance from Heav'n to earth, from earth to Heav'n;

And as Imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues: nor nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

What stronger breastplate 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.

CHAP. IX.

OH, World! thy slippery turns: Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise
Are still together; who twine, as 'twere, in love
Inseparable; shall within this hour,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep,
To take the one the other, by some chance,

Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends,
And interjoin their issues.

So it falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why then we reck the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us,
While it was ours.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange, that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come, when it will come.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out;

For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry.
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all; admonishing,
That we should dress us fairly for our end.

O momentary grace of mortal men,

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
Who builds his hope in th' air of men's fair looks,
Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

Who shall go about

To cozen fortune, and be honourable
Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.

O that estates, degrees, and offices,

Were not derived corruptly; that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover, that stand bare!
How many be commanded, that command!

Oh who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December's snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
Oh, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse;
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.

"Tis slander,

Whose edge is sharper than tne sword; whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states,
Maids, matrons, nay the secrets of the grave,
This viperous slander enters.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.

To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow, Creeps in this petty space from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusky death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more! It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

7 15

BOOK II.

Narrative Pieces.

CHAP. I.

THE DERVISE.

A DERVISE, travelling through Tartary, being arrived at the town of Balk, went into the king's palace by mistake, as thinking it to be a public inn or caravansary. Having looked about him for some time, he entered into a long gallery, where he laid down his wallet, and spread his carpet, in or

der to repose himself upon it after the manner of the eastern nations. He had not been long in this posture, before he was discovered by some of the guards, who asked him what was his business in that place. The dervise told them he intended to take up his night's lodging in that caravansary. The guards let him know, in a very angry manner, that the house he was in was not a caravansary, but the king's palace. It happened that the king himself passed through the gallery during this debate, and, smiling at the mistake of the dervise, asked him how he could possibly be so dull as not to distin guish a palace from a caravansary. Sir, says the dervise, give me leave to ask your majesty a question or two. Who were the persons that lodged in this house when it was first built? The king replied, his ancestors. And who, says the dervise, was the last person that lodged here? The king replied, his father. And who is it, says the dervise, that lodges here at present? The king told him, that it was he

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