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JOHN FLETCHER. 1576-1625.

Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,1
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

Upon an "Honest Man's Fortune."
All things that are

Made for our general uses are at war,

Even we among ourselves.

Man is his own star; and that soul that can
Be honest is the only perfect man.2

Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan,
Sorrow calls no time that's gone;

Violets plucked, the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.3

Ibid.

Ibid.

The Queen of Corinth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

O woman, perfect woman! what distraction

Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!

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1 Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular all his life long. BURTON: Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2, memb. 1, subsect. 2. Burton also quotes Anthony Rusca in this connection, v. xviii.

2 An honest man's the noblest work of God. - POPE: Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 248. BURNS: The Cotter's Saturday Night.

8 Weep no more, Lady! weep no more,

Thy sorrow is in vain ;

For violets plucked, the sweetest showers

Will ne'er make grow again.

PERCY: Reliques. The Friar of Orders Gray.

4 Let us do or die. - BURNS: Bannockburn. CAMPBELL: Gertrude of Wyoming, part iii. stanza 37.

Scott says, "This expression is a kind of common property, being the motto, we believe, of a Scottish family."- Review of Gertrude, Scott's Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 153.

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Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves.

Drink to-day, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do 't to-morrow.

Ibid.

The Bloody Brother. Act ii. Sc. 2.

And he that will to bed go sober
Falls with the leaf still in October.3

Three merry boys, and three merry boys,
And three merry boys are we,*

As ever did sing in a hempen string

Under the gallows-tree.

Hide, oh, hide those hills of snow
Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are of those that April wears!
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee."

1 See Bacon, page 165.

Ibid.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

Act v. Sc. 2.

2 Naught so sweet as melancholy. - BURTON: Anatomy of Melancholy. Author's Abstract.

8 The following well-known catch, or glee, is formed on this song:

He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,

Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October; But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow, Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow. 4 Three merry men be we. PEELE: Old Wives Tale, 1595. WEBSTER (quoted) Westward Hoe, 1607. 5 See Shakespeare, page 49.

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Something given that way. The Lover's Progress. Act i. Sc. 1.

Deeds, not words.1

Act iii. Sc. 4.

ROBERT BURTON. 1576-1640.

Anatomy of Melancholy. The Author's Abstract.

Naught so sweet as melancholy.2

I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.1

Democritus to the Reader.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works."

Ibid.

We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer. . . . Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.

Ibid.

I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself."

1 Deeds, not words. — BUTLER : Hudibras, part i. canto i. line 867.
2 See Fletcher, page 184.

There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy.

HOOD: Ode to Melancholy.

Ibid.

3 Dr. Johnson said Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. And Byron said, "If the reader has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty other works with which I am acquainted.” — Works, vol. i. p. 144. 4 A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind. - GARRICK : Prologue on quitting the stage.

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco (Being not unacquainted with woe, I learn to help the unfortunate). — VIRGIL: Æneid, lib. i. 630. 5. See Shakespeare, page 84.

6 Nihil dictum quod non dictum prius (There is nothing said which has not been said before). — TERENCE: Eunuchus, Prol. 10.

7 A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two. - HERBERT: Jacula Prudentum.

A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant's shoulders to mount on. COLERIDGE: The Friend, sect. i. essay viii.

Pigmæi gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident (Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves). - Didacus Stella in Lucan, 10, tom. ii.

It is most true, stylus virum arguit, our style bewrays us.1 Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader. I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones.2 Ibid.

As that great captain, Ziska, would have a drum made of his skin when he was dead, because he thought the very noise of it would put his enemies to flight. Ibid. Like the watermen that row one way and look another.

Ibid.

Smile with an intent to do mischief, or cozen him whom he salutes.*

Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself."

Rob Peter, and pay Paul."

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Women wear the breeches.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Like Esop's fox, when he had lost his tail, would have all his fellow foxes cut off theirs."

Ibid.

Our wrangling lawyers . . . are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell.

Ibid.

Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.

8

Ibid.

1 Le style est l'homme même (The style is the man himself). - BUFFON: Discours de Réception (Recueil de l'Académie, 1750).

2 Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form. MONTAIGNE: Apology for Raimond Sebond, book ii.

chap. xii.

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3 Like watermen who look astern while they row the boat ahead. - PLUTARCH: Whether 't was rightfully said, Live concealed.

Like rowers, who advance backward. — MONTAIGNE: Of Profit and Honour, book iii. chap. i.

4 See Shakespeare, page 132.

5 See Heywood, page 15.

6 See Heywood, page 14. RABELAIS: book i. chap. xi.

7

SOP: Fables, book v. fable v.

8. He left a corsair's name to other times,

Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

BYRON The Corsair, canto iii. stanza 24.

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.

Anatomy of Melancholy. Part i. Sect. 1, Memb. 2, Subsect. 5.

Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long.1 Sect. 2, Memb. 1, Subsect. 2.

[Witches] steal young children out of their cradles, ministerio dæmonum, and put deformed in their rooms, which we call changelings.

Can build castles in the air.2

Subsect. 3.

Ibid.

Joh. Mayor, in the first book of his "History of Scotland," contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread; it was objected to him, then living at Paris, that his countrymen fed on oats and base grain. . . . And yet Wecker out of Galen calls it horse-meat, and fitter juments than men to feed on.3 Memb. 2, Subsect. 1.

Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

Subsect. 2.

As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.*

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception."

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

Ibid.

Subsect. 3.

Subsect. 6.

Why doth one man's yawning make another yawn?

1 See Fletcher, page 183.

Memb. 3, Subsect. 2.

2 "Castles in the air," -Montaigne, Sir Philip Sidney, Massinger, Sir Thomas Browne, Giles Fletcher, George Herbert, Dean Swift, Broome, Fielding, Cibber, Churchill, Shenstone, and Lloyd.

8 Oats, - a grain which is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. SAMUEL JOHNSON: Dictionary of the English Language.

4 Carpet knights are men who are by the prince's grace and favour made knights at home. .. They are called carpet knights because they receive their honours in the court and upon carpets. - MARKHAM : Booke of Honour (1625).

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"Carpet knights," Du Bartas (ed. 1621), p. 311. 5 The exception proves the rule.

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