UNAPPRECIATED WISDOM.

A wise man poor

Is like a sacred book that's never read;

To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead. This age thinks better of a gilded fool,

Than of a threadbare saint in Wisdom's school.

Decker.

THE INFATUATION OF LOVE.

Love is nature's second sun,

Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
And, as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men; so, without love
All beauties bred in woman are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried;

For love informs them as the sun doth colours.
`And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers;
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
Oh! 'tis the paradise! the heaven of earth!

Chapman.

WHAT IS DEATH?

I was born to die:

'Tis but expanding thought, and life is nothing. Ages and generations pass away,

And with resistless force, like waves o'er waves, Rolls down the irrevocable stream of time, Into the insatiate ocean of for-ever.

FEAR.

Rowe.

If all fear'd drowning that spy waves ashore, Gold would grow rich, and all the merchants

poor.

THE PLEASURES OF A LIBRARY.

That place that does contain

Tourneur.

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-placed statues.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

Love.

Love's voice doth sing

As sweetly in a beggar as a king.

Decker.

LOVE: ITS FICKLENESS.

Love is a law, a discord of such force,

That 'twixt our sense and reason makes di

vorce;

Love's a desire, that to obtain betime,

We lose an age of years pluck'd from our

prime;

Love is a thing to which we soon consent,

As soon refuse, but sooner far repent.

FALSE FRIENDSHIP.

Webster and Rowley.

That friendship's raised on sand,

Which every sudden gust of discontent,
Or flowing of our passions, can change
As if it ne'er had been.

MARRIAGE, GOOD OR BAD ONLY.

Massinger.

I take it, as those that deny purgatory;
It locally contains or heaven or hell,—
There's no third place in 't.

Webster.

FEAR AND Danger.

Though fear see nothing but extremity,
Yet danger is no deep sea, but a ford,
Where they that yield can only drownèd be.

HOW TO ESTIMATE FRIENDSHIP.

Greville.

Friendship ought never be discuss'd in words, Till all her deeds be finish'd. Who, looking in a book,

And reads but some part of it only, cannot judge What praise the whole deserves, because his knowledge

Is grounded but on part.

VIRTUE TO BE CHERISHED.

Tailor.

Whoever can

And will not cherish Virtue, is no man.

Ben Jonson.

THE JUSTICE OF HONOUR.

Honour is

Virtue's allow'd ascent; honour that clasps
All perfect justice in her arms, that craves
No more respect than what she gives, that does
Nothing but what she 'll suffer. Massinger.