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The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: 0, woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Hamlet, iii. 1.

(Laertes log.)

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia !
O heavens is 't possible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love: and where 't is fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

Hamlet, iv. 5.

XX.

'Mors sola fatetur quantula sint Hominum Corpuscula.'
(Prince Henry loq.)

ILL-WEAVED ambition, how much art thou shrunk !
When that this body did contain a spirit,

A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth

Is room enough.

First Part of King Henry IV., v. 4.

XXI.

QUEEN MAB.

(Mercutio loq.)

SHE is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;

The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film :
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid :
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.

XXII.1

LOVE v. LEARNING.

(Biron loq.)

CONSIDER What you first did swear unto,

To fast, to study, and to see no woman:
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young ;
And abstinence engenders maladies.

And where that you have vowed to study, lords,
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

They are the ground, the books, the academes,

From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why, universal plodding prisons up

The nimble spirits in the arteries,

As motion, and long-during action tires
The sinewy-vigour of the traveller.

Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes;
And study too, the causer of your vow:
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are, our learning likewise is:
Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
Do we not likewise see our learning there?

Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore, finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;

A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound.

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste;
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ?

Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute,* strung with his hair : And, when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

* A simile borrowed by Milton in Comus

'How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute.'

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were tempered with Love's sighs:
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3.

XXIII.

THE REASON OF MERCY.

(Portia loq.)

THE quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes :
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown ;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.

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