BOASTING.

BOLDNESS. BONDS.

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We rise in glory as we sink in pride;
Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

Young.

BOLDNESS.

I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirred up by heaven, thus boldly for his king.
Shakspere.

In conversation boldness now bears sway,
But know, that nothing can so foolish be
As empty boldness; therefore, first assay

And stuff thy mind with solid bravery;
Then march on gallant. Get substantial worth,
Boldness gilds finely, and will set it forth.

Herbert.

Sure if the guilt were theirs, they could not charge

thee,

With such a gallant boldness; if 't were thine,
Thou could not bear 't with such a silent scorn.

BONDS-BONDAGE.

WEDDING is great Juno's crown,

Denham.

O blessed bond of bed and board.

Shakspere.

Shakspere.

To be a queen in bondage is more vile
Than is a slave in base servility.

Our cage

We make a choir, as doth the prisoned bird,

And sing our bondage freely.

Happy the bonds that hold ye;

Sure they be sweeter far than liberty.

Shakspere.

There is no blessedness but in such bondage; Happy that happy chain! such links are heavenly.

K

Beaumont and Fletcher.

Is nobler than attending for a check;

Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk;

Such gain the cap of him that makes them fine,
Yet keeps his book uncrossed.

Shakspere.

Receive the sentence of the law for sins,

Such as by God's book are adjudged to death.

Shakspere.

See a book of prayer in his hand,

True ornaments to know a holy man.

Shakspere.

A book! O rare one!

Be not, as is our fangled word, a garment
Nobler than that it covers.

Give me

Shakspere.

Leave to enjoy myself. That place that does
Contain my books, the best companions, is
To me a glorious court, where hourly I

Converse with the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes for variety, I confer

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,

Unto a strict account; and in my fancy,

Deface their ill-plac'd statues. Can I then
Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care

To augment a heap of wealth: it shall be mine
To increase in knowledge.

Fletcher.

And though books, madam, cannot make this mind, Which we must bring apt to be set aright;

Yet do they rectify it in that kind,

And touch it so, as that it turns that way
Where judgment lies. And though we cannot find
The certain place of truth, yet do they stay,
And entertain us near about the same.

Daniel.

Books are part of man's prerogative,
In formal ink they thought and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old.
Our life, fame pieceth longer at the end,
And books it farther backward doth extend.
Sir Thomas Overbury.

All hail, ye fields, where constant peace attends!
All hail, ye sacred solitary groves!

All hail, ye books, my true, my real friends

Whose conversation pleases and improves.-Walsh.

Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
Denham.

'Twere well for most, if books, that could engage
Their childhood, pleased them at a riper age;
The man approving what had charmed the boy,
Would die at last in comfort, peace, and joy;
And not with curses on his art, who stole
The gem of truth from his unguarded soul.-Cowper.

Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print,
A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.

Learning is more profound

When in few solid authors 't may be found.
A few good books, digested well, do feed

Byron.

The mind; much cloys, or doth ill humours breed.

Robert Heath.

Our doctor thus, with stuffed sufficiency
Of all omnigenus omnisciency,

Began, (as who would not begin

That had like him so much within?)

To let it out in books of all sorts,

Folios, quartos, large and small sorts. Moore.

One glance of wonder as we pass deserve
The Books of Time. Productive was the world
In many things, but most in books. Like swarms
Of locusts, which God sent to vex a land,

Rebellious long, admonished long in vain,
Their numbers they poured annually on man,
From heads conceiving still-perpetual birth!
Thou wonderest how the world contained them all:
Thy wonder stay. Like men this was their doom-
"That dust they were and should to dust return;"
And oft their fathers, childless and bereaved,
Wept o'er their graves when they themselves were

green.

Pollok.

The past but lives in words: a thousand ages Were blank, if books had not evoked their ghosts, And kept the pale imbodied shades to warn us From fleshless lips.

Bulwer.

I'm strange contradictions; I'm new and I'm old,
I'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold.
Though I never could read, yet lettered I'm found;
Though blind, I enlighten; though loose, I am bound.
I'm always in black, and I'm always in white;
I am grave and I'm gay, I am heavy and light.
In form too I differ,-I'm thick and I'm thin,
I've no flesh and no bone, yet I'm covered with skin;
I've more points than the compass, more stops than the
flute;

I sing without voice, without speaking confute;
I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch;
Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much;
I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages,
And no monarch alive has so many pages.
Hannah More.

My days among the dead are past;
Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day;
With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;

And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedewed
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

Southey.

Come let me make a sunny realin around thee,
Of thoughts and beauty!-here are books and flowers,
With spells to loose the fetters that have bound thee,
The ravelled evil of this world's feverish hours.

Mrs. Hemans.

Books are men of higher stature, And the only men who speak aloud for future times Miss Barrett.

to hear.

Thou whom the world with heartless intercourse
Hath wearied, and thy spirits hoarded gold
Coldly impoverished, and with husks repaid,
Turn hither. 'Tis a quiet resting-place,
Silent, yet peopled well. Here mayst thou hold
Communion eloquent, and undismayed,

Even with the greatest of the ancient earth-
Sages and sires of science. These shall gird
And sublimate thy soul until it soar

Above the elements.

Mrs. Sigourney.

A blessing on the printer's art;
Books are the waters of the heart,
The burning soul, the burdened mind,
In books alone companions find.
We never speak our deepest feelings;
Our holiest hopes have no revealings,
Save in the gleams that light the face,
Or fancies that the pen may trace;
And hence to books the heart must turn
When with unspoken thoughts we yearn.

Mrs. Hale.

See tomes on tomes, of fancy and of power,
To cheer man's heaviest, warm his holiest hour.
Turn back the tide of ages to its head,
And hoard the wisdom of the honour'd dead.

Charles Sprague.

A book's the tow that makes the tether
That binds the quick and dead together;
A speaking trumpet underground,
That turns a silence to a sound: