Why, look around, And count, if possible, the pamper'd numbers Who fatten on the state: they are the men, Who, if they find a man too honourable To be a fellow-gleaner of the spoils, When faction's sickle sweeps the public wealth, Lift up their angry voices to the crowd And breathe around their pestilential breath, Till virtue's self is tainted by the touch.

Dawes's Athenia of Damascus. They who bend to Power, and lap its milk, Are fickler and more dangerous far than they Who honestly defy it!

Boker's Calaynos.

OPINION.

Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan The outward habit by the inward man.

Shaks. Pericles.

Opinion, the blind goddess of fools, foe To the virtuous, and only friend to Undeserving persons.

That with a venomous contagion,
Invades the sick imagination;
And when it seizes any part,
It strikes the poison to the heart.

This men of one another catch
By contact, as the humours match;
And nothing's so perverse in nature
As a profound opinionator.

389

Butler's Hudibras

How can you rest where pow'r is still alarm'd:
Each crowd a faction, and each faction arm'd?
Who fashions of opinion love to change,
And think their own the best for being strange;
Their own, if it were lasting, they would hate;
Yet call it conscience when 't is obstinate.
Sir W. Davenant.

We all, my lords, have err'd.
Men may, I find, be honest, though they differ.
Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda.
For still the world prevail'd, and its dread laugh,
Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn.
Thomson's Seasons.

How much there is self-will would do,

Were it not for the dire dismay
That bids ye shrink, as ye suddenly think
Of "what will my neighbours say?"

Miss Eliza Cook.

Let not opinion make thy judgment err; The evening conquest crowns the conqueror.

O. W. Holmes.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flow, leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Shaks. Julius Cæsar

Her feet are swift, bald is her head behind:
Whoso hath hold, and after lets her go,
Doth lose the lot which fortune did bestow.
Mirror for Magistrates.
Opportunity to statesmen, is as the just degree
Of heat to chymists; it perfects all the work.
Suckling's Brennoralt.

The old Scythians
Painted blind fortune's powerful hands with wings,
To show her gifts come swift and suddenly,
Which, if her fav'rite be not swift to take,
He loses them for ever.

Chapman's Busy D'Ambois.
Accursed opportunity!

The midwife and the bawd to all our vices:
That work'st our thoughts into desires: desires
To resolutions: and these being ripe and quicken'd,
Thou giv'st 'em birth, and bring'st 'em forth to

And 't is remarkable that they
Talk most, that have the least to say.
Your daily speakers have the curse,
To plead their causes down to worse:
As dames who native beauty want,
Still uglier look the more they paint.

Prior's Alma. Grac'd as thou art with all the power of words, So known, so honour'd at the house of lords. Pope.

With studied impropriety of speech,
He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach;
To epithets allots emphatic state,
Whilst principles ungrac'd, like lacquies wait;
In ways first trodden by himself excels,

And stands alone in undeclinables;
Conjunction, preposition, adverb join

To stamp new vigour on the nervous line;
In monosyllables his thunders roll,
He, she, it, and we, ye, they, fright the soul.
Churchill's Rosciad.
Statesman all over! in plots famous grown!
He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.
Churchill's Rosciad.
While words of learned length, and thund'ring
sound,

Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around;
And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew
That one small head should carry all he knew.
Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought
of dining.
Goldsmith's Retaliation.
So quick the words too, when he deign'd to speak,

As if each syllable would break its neck.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

Proud of his "hear hims," proud too of his vote
And last virginity of oratory,

Proud of his learning (just enough to quote), He revell'd in his Ciceronian glory: With memory excellent to get by rote, With wit to hatch a pun or tell a story, Graced with some merit and with more effrontery, 'His country's pride;" he came down to the country.

Byron.

His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
Of rhetoric, which the learn'd call "rigmarole."
Byron.

He answer'd like a statesman or a prophet,
In such guise that she could make nothing of it.
Byron.

He scratch'd his ear, the infallible resource To which embarrass'd people have recourse.

Byron.

PARASITE.

391

PAIN.

Sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life: But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience

PARENTS.

Our pains are real things, and all
Our pleasures but fantastical;
Diseases of their own accord,
But cures come difficult and hard.

Butler's Hudibras.
Thee, too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of idleness.

Again the play of pain

Shoots o'er his features as the sudden gust Crisps the reluctant lake, that lay so calm Beneath the mountain shadow.

Pope.

Byron.

They talk of short-liv'd pleasure—be it so—
Pain dies as quickly; stern, hard-featur'd pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign.

Bryant's Poems.

Parents are o'erseen,

When, with too strict a rein, they do hold in Their child's affections; and control that love, Which the powers divine instruct them with: When in their shallow judgments, they may know Affection cross'd, brings misery and woe.

Robert Taylour's Hog hath lost its Pearl. Fathers their children, and themselves abuse; That wealth, a husband, for their daughters choose. Shirley's School of Compliments

Honour thy parents to prolong thine end;
With them, though for a truth, do not contend:
Though all should truth defend, do thou lose rather
The truth awhile, than lose their love for ever:
Whoever makes his father's heart to bleed,
Shall have a child that will revenge the deed.

Randolph