Profound Dejection. I have to offer. The misfortune I have lain under, these six years, of your Majesty's displeasure, has rendered life so insipid to me, that, besides the honour of losing it in your Majesty's service, the prospect of an end being by death put to my vexations, makes the thought of my dissolution pleasing to me. If it submission. should seem good to your Majesty to finish my distresses the other way, I mean by your most gracious pardon, the obligation will be still greater; and to the zeal I have for your Majesty's interest, I shall think myself obliged to add gratitude suitable to so important a favour. May heaven touch the heart of your Majesty, that you may at last forgive your sinHumble re- cerely penitent subject. No one knows better than your Majesty that it is as great to forgive as to punish. If I alone am doomed to have no benefit from that goodness, which extends to so many, my lot must be peculiarly calamitous. Devotion. monstrance. VIII.-DISCOURSING-INFORMATION. Part of Socrates's speech to Montaigne, translated from the Teaching. Antiquity is an object of a peculiar sort: distance magnifies it. If you had been personally acquainted with Aristotle, Phocion, and me, you would have found nothing in us very different from what you may find in people of your own age. What commonly prejudices us in favour of antiquity is, that we are prejudiced against our own times. We raise the ancients, that we may depress the moderns. When we ancients were alive, we esteemed our ancestors more than they deserved. And our posterity esteem us more than we deserve. But the very truth Disapprobation. of the matter is, our ancestors, and we and our pos terity, are all very much alike. IX.-A LOVE-SICK SHEPHERD'S COMPLAINT. Ah-well-a-day how long must I endure Lamenta tion. Delights in grief, nor any measure knows. Lo! now the moon begins in clouds to rise, The bright'ning stars bespangle all the skies, 'Mong rustic routs the chief for wanton game; Wont they upon the green to shift their feet! The jolly youths I fly; and all alone fruitless moan. 1 The words pining pain cannot be spoken too slowly. The speaker is to seem roused here, as by a sudden pung. A stop before and after the words, O cruel love, which are to be expressed with exclamation of anguish. Anguish. Complaint Anguish. Lamenta tion. Deprecation Oh! leave thy cruelty, relentless fair, Ere, lingering long, I perish through despair. Complaint. Had Rosalind been mistress of my mind, Advice. Despair. Though not so fair, she would have prov'd more kind 1 But faded beauty has no second spring ; -My words are wind!-She, deaf to all my cries, A. Philips. Narration. A we. X.-AUTHORITY AND FORBIDDING. Jupiter forbids the gods and goddesses taking any part in the AURORA now, fair daughter of the dawn, Authority. ye hear; Who yields assistance, or but wills to yield. Back to the skies with shame he shall be driv'n 1 A long pause. There are three pretty long pauses to be made in this line, at the words states, gods, and ear. Or from our sacred hill with fury thrown Deep, in the dark Tartarean gulph shall groan; Threatening. Whose strong embrace holds heav'n and earth and main. Strive all, of mortal and immortal birth, To drag by this the thund'rer down to earth. Challenging. Contempt. XI.--CONTEMPT OF THE COMMON OBJECTS OF PURSUIT. Honour and shame, from no condition rise; Teaching. "What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl? Questioning. 'I'll tell you, friend! A wise man and a fool. 1 This line ("I'll tell you, friend," &c.) may be expressed in a sort of important half-whisper, and with significant looks and mods, as if a grand secret was told. Informning. Teaching. You'll find, if once the wise man acts the monk; But by your father's worth, if yours you rate, Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood: Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long. Look next on greatness. Say, where greatness lies? Sneer. From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; Contempt. The whole strange purpose of their lives to find, 1Or make-an enemy of all mankind. Remonstrance. Not one looks backward; onward still he goes; All sly, slow things, with circumspective eyes. Aversion. I have put a pause after make, though contrary to general rules, to mark the antithesis between find and make more distinctly. "All sly, slow things," to be pronounced very slowly, and with a cunning look. |