THE LAW BEFORE THE GOSPEL.
BASSANIO. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?
SHYLOCK. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.
GRATIANO. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,
Thou makʼst thy knife keen: but no metal can, No, not the hangman's axe, bear half the keen
Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce
SHY. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.
GRA. O, be thou damn'd, inexorable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accus'd.
Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd awolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous.
SHY.
Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond,
Thou but offend'st thy lungs to speak so loud: Repair thy wit, good youth; or it will fall
To cureless ruin.-I stand here for law.
MERCHANT OF VENICE, A. 4, s. 1.
THE LAY AND SPIRITUAL PEERS' ARGUMENTS RESPECTING THEIR
RELATIVE DUTIES.
WESTMORELAND.
Unto your grace do I in chief address
The substance of my speech. If that rebellion
Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rage,
And countenanc'd by boys, and beggary;
I say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd,
In his true, native, and most proper shape,
You, reverend father, and these noble lords,
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form
Of base and bloody insurrection
With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop,-
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain❜d;
Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;
Whose learning and good letters peace hath
Whose white investments figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,-
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself,
Out of the speech of peace, that bears such
grace,
Into the harsh and boist'rous tongue of war? Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,
Your pens to lances; and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?
ARCHBISHOP. Wherefore do I this?—so the question stands.
Briefly to this end :-We are all diseas'd;
And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it: of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I, as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men:
But, rather, show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank minds, sick of happiness;
And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh'd
What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforc'd from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion:
And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which, long ere this, we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience:
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our
griefs,
We are denied access unto his person
Even by those men that most have done us
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet appearing blood,) and the examples
Of every minute's instance, (present now,)
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms:
Not to break peace, or any branch of it;
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.
WEST. When ever yet was your appeal denied?
Wherein have you been galled by the king? What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you? That you should seal this lawless bloody book Of forg'd rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge? ARCH. My brother general, the commonwealth,
To brother born an household cruelty,
I make my quarrel in particular.
WEST. There is no need of any such redress; Or, if there were, it not belongs to you.
K. HENRY IV., PART II., A. 4, s. 1.
THE LEVER OF FUTURE PROGRESS. LORENZO. How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of musick
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica: Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins :
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.—
Enter Musicians.
Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn;
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with musick.
JESSICA. I am never merry, when I hear
[Musick. LOR. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of musick touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,
By the sweet power of musick: Therefore, the
poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But musick for the time doth change his nature:
The man that hath no musick in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
MERCHANT OF VENICE, A. 5, s. 1.
THE LOVE CHARM.
I KNOW a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
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