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Religio Medici. Part i. Sect. xvi.

Sect. xliv.

Nature is the art of God.1

The thousand doors that lead to death.2

The heart of man is the place the Devil 's in: I feel sometimes a hell within myself."

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

Sect. li.

Sect. lv.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike.*

Part ii. Sect. ii.

There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres."

Sleep is a death; oh, make me try'
By sleeping what it is to die,

Sect. ix.

And as gently lay my head.

On my grave as now my bed!

Ruat cœlum, fiat voluntas tua.

Sect. xii.

Ibid.

1 The course of Nature is the art of God. - YOUNG: Night Thoughts,

night ix. line 1267.

2 See Massinger, page 194.

3 The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

MILTON Paradise Lost, book i. line 253.

4 The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another. PLINY: Natural History, book vii. chap. i.

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Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.—JOHNSON (1777).

There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. - MONTAIGNE: Of the Resemblance of Children to their Fathers, book i. chap. xxxvii. 5 Oh, could you view the melody

Of every grace

And music of her face.

6 See Herbert, page 204.

LOVELACE: Orpheus to Beasts.

Times before you, when even living men were antiquities, when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater number.1

Dedication to Urn-Burial.

I look upon you as gem of the old rock.2

Ibid.

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.

Chap. v.

Quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests.

Ibid.

Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it."

Ibid.

What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.

Ibid.

When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.

Vulgar Errors.

EDMUND WALLER. 1605-1687.

The yielding marble of her snowy breast.

On a Lady passing through a Crowd of People.

That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which on the shaft that made him die
Espied a feather of his own,

Wherewith he wont to soar so high.'

To a Lady singing a Song of his Composing.

1 'Tis long since Death had the majority. - BLAIR: The Grave, part ü. line 449.

2 Adamas de rupe præstantissimus (A most excellent diamond from the rock).

A chip of the old block. - PRIOR: Life of Burke.

3 The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it.

CIBBER: Richard III. act iii. sc. 1.

4 So in the Libyan fable it is told

That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,

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A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair;
Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.

For all we know

Of what the blessed do above

Is, that they sing, and that they love.

Poets that lasting marble seek
Must come in Latin or in Greek.

On a Girdle.

While I listen to thy Voice.

Of English Verse.

Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath receiv'd our yoke.

Go, lovely rose!

Upon the Death of the Lord Protector.

Tell her that wastes her time and me

That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a muse.

Go, Lovely Rose.

Ibid.

Panegyric on Cromwell.

Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

ÆSCHYLUS: Fragm. 123 (Plumptre's Translation).

So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,

No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,

And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.

BYRON English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, line 826.

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume

To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,
See their own feathers pluck'd to wing the dart
Which rank corruption destines for their heart.

THOMAS MOORE: Corruption.

In such green palaces the first kings reign'd,
Slept in their shades, and angels entertain'd;
With such old counsellors they did advise,
And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise.

And keeps the palace of the soul.1

On St. James's Park.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

Of Tea.

Upon Roscommon's Translation of Horace, De Arte Poetica.

Could we forbear dispute and practise love,

We should agree as angels do above. Divine Love. Canto iii.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.2 Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home:

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

On the Divine Poems.

THOMAS FULLER. 1608-1661.

Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body. Life of Monica.

He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it."

1 The dome of thought, the palace of the soul. canto ii, stanza 6.

Life of the Duke of Alva.

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2 See Daniel, page 39.

To vanish in the chinks that Time has made. ROGERS: Pæstum.

8 A fiery soul, which, working out its way,

Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,

And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.

DRYDEN: Absalom and Achitophel, part i, line 156.

She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him.

The Holy and Profane State.

The Good Wife.

He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows. The Good Husband.

One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience. The Good Advocate.

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.1 The True Church Antiquary.

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But our captain counts the image of God nevertheless his image cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven. The Good Sea-Captain.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. The Virtuous Lady.

The lion is not so fierce as painted.2

Of Preferment.

Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room. Of Natural Fools.

The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

Of Tombs.

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

Of Books.

They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.

Of Marriage.

Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high.

Andronicus. Sect. vi. Par. 18, 1.

1 See Bacon, page 166.

2 See Herbert, page 205.

8 See Bacon, page 170.

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