Think'st thou there dwells no courage but in And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.

Refusal! canst thou wear a smoother form!
Young's Night Thoughts.

The court's a golden, but a fatal circle,
Upon whose magic skirts a thousand devils
In crystal forms sit, tempting innocence,
And beckon early virtue from its centre.

Lee's Nero
Fly from the court's pernicious neighbourhood;
Where innocence is sham'd, and blushing modesty
Is made the scorner's jest; where hate, deceit,
And deadly ruin wear the mask of beauty,
And draw deluded fools with shows of pleasure.
Rowe's Jane Shore.

See there he comes, th' exalted idol comes!
The circle's form'd, and all his fawning slaves
Devoutly bow to earth; from every mouth
The nauseous flattery flows, which he returns
With promises which die as soon as born.
Vile intercourse, where virtue has no place!
Frown but the monarch, all his glories fade;
He mingles with the throng, outcast, undone,
The pageant of a day; without one friend
To soothe his tortur'd mind; all, all are fled,
For though they bask'd in his meridian ray,
The insects vanish as his beams decline.

Somerville's Chase,

Spenser's Fairy Queen. Those sculptur'd halls my feet shall never tread,
Where varnish'd vice, and vanity, combin'd
To dazzle and seduce, their banners spread;
And forge vile shackles for the free-born mind.
Smollett's Ode to Independence.

O happy they that never saw the court,
Nor ever knew great men but by report.
Webster's White Devil.
And what are courts but camps of misery!
That do besiege men states, and still are press'd
T'assail, prevent, complot and fortify;
In hope t' attain, in fear to be suppress'd:
Where all with shows, and with apparency,
Men seem as if for stratagems address'd:
Where fortune, as the wolf, doth still prefer
The foulest of the train that follows her.

Daniel.

O vain to seek delight in earthly thing!
But most in courts where proud ambition towers;
Deluded wight! who weens fair peace can spring
Beneath the pompous dome of kesar or of king.
Shenstone's School Mistress.

Painted for sight and essenc'd for the smell,
Like frigates fraught with spice and cochineal,
Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes
So weak a vessel and so rich a prize!
Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim,
Shaks. Cymb. He boarding her, she striking sail to him.

Our courtiers say, all's savage, but at court.
Experience, O thou disprov'st report.

Revolve what tales I have told you
Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war:
This service is not service, so being done,
But being so allow'd.

Shaks. Cymb.
Virtue must be thrown off, 'tis a coarse garment,
Too heavy for the sunshine of a court

Dear countess! you have charms all hearts to suit!
And, sweet sir Topling! you have so much wit!
Such wits and beauties are not prais'd for nought,
For both the beauty and the wit are bought.

Pope.

I was not born for courts, or great affairs;
I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.

Dryden's Spanish Friar. Courts can give nothing to the wise and good, But scorn of pomp, and love of solitude.

Pope.

Young's Love of Fame.

There we grow early grey, but never wise;
There form connections, and acquire no friends.
Cooper's Task.

Hast thou then liv'd in courts? Hast thou grown
grey

Beneath the mask a subtle statesman wears
To hide his secret soul, and dost not know
That of all fickle fortune's transient gifts,
Favour is most deceitful?

Hannah More's Daniel. Part I. And dwarfs and blacks, and such like things that gain

Their bread as ministers and favourites — (that's
To say by degradation) — mingled there
As plentiful as in a court or fair.

Above all things raillery decline,
Nature but few does for that task design:
'Tis in the ablest hands a dangerous tool,
But never fails to wound the meddling fool;
For all must grant it needs no common art
To keep men patient when we make them smart.
No wit alone, nor humour's self, will do,
Without good-nature, and much prudence too,
To judge aright of persons, place and time;
For taste decrees what's low, and what's sublime;
And what might charm to-day, or o'er a glass,
Perhaps at court, or next day, would not pass.
Stillingfleet

Would you both please and be instructed too,
Watch well the rage of shining, to subdue;
And ever be more knowing than you seem,
Hear every man upon his favourite theme,
The lowest genius will afford some light,
Cr give a hint that had escaped your sigt.

Stilling fleet.

This Florentine's a very saint, so meek
And full of courtesy, that he would lend
The devil his cloak, and stand i' th' rain himself.
Sir W Davenant.

All soldiers valour, all divines have grace,
As maids of honour beauty,-by their place.
Young's Love of Fame

Byron. Discourse may want an animated No,
To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
Cowper's Conversation.

The thrall and state at the palace gate
Are what my spirit has learn'd to hate;
Oh. the hills shall be a home for me,
For I'd leave a throne for the home of the free!

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide;

To lose good days that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent,
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear to-morrow;
To have thy princess' grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despaires;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne,
Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendence spend.
Spenser's Mother Hubbard's Tale.
'Tis common in such base fellows, such court
Spiders, that weave their webs of flattery
In the ears of greatness; if they can once
Entangle them in their quaint treachery,
They poison them straight.

And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honey-suckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter; like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.

Shaks. Much ado.

Live loath'd and long,

Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,
Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears.
You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time's flies,
Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute jacks.
Shaks. Timon.

Others there are,

Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves;
And throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them, and, when they have lin'd
their coats,

Do themselves homage: these fellows have some
soul;

John Day's Isle of Gulls. And such a one do I profess myself.

The caterpillars of the commonwealth,
Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

Shaks. Richard II.
I hardly yet have learn'd
T" insinuate, flatter, bow and bend my knee.
Shaks. Richard II.

To dog his heels, and court'sy at his frowns,
To show how much thou art degenerate.

Shaks. Othello.

All courtiers are a wise man's home,
And so are governments to some.

Butler's Hudibras.

Th' old Romans freedom did bestow,
Our princes worship, with a blow;
King Pyrrhus cur'd his splenetic
And testy courtiers with a kick.

Butler's Hudibras.

Those that go up hill, use to bow,
Their bodies forward, and stoop low,
To poise themselves, and sometimes creep,
When th' way is difficult and steep:
So those at court, that do address,
By low ignoble offices,

Can stoop at any thing that's base,
To wriggle into trust and grace,
Are like to rise to greatness sooner,
Than those that go by worth and honour.
Butler's Hudibras.

I in no soul-consumption wait
Whole years at levees of the great,
And hungry hopes regale the while
On the spare diet of a smile.

Green's Spleen.

How many men

Have spent their blood in their dear country's service,

Shaks. Henry IV. Part I. Yet now pine under want; while selfish slaves,
That even would cut their throats whom now they
fawn on,

But yet I call you servile ministers,
That bave with two pernicious daughters join'd
Yon nigh engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
Sood and white as this. O, oh! 't is foul.

Shaks. Lear.

Like deadly locusts, eat the honey up,

Which those industrious bees so hardly toil'd for
Otway's Orphan.

With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest;
Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings.

Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
Condemn'd a needy suppliant to wait,
While ladies interpose and slaves debate.

Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
To shake with laughter ere the jest they hear,
To pour at will the counterfeited tear;
And, as her patron hints the cold or heat,
To shake in dog-days, in December sweat.
Dr. Johnson's London.

A lazy, proud, unprofitable crew,
The vermin gender'd from the rank corruption
Of a luxurious state.

Cumberland's Timon of Athens.

There is a public mischief in your mirth;
It plagues your country. Folly such as yours
Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, stedfast but for you,
A mutilated structure soon to fall.

Cowper's Task.
Ungrateful scoundrels! eat my roils and butter,
And daring thus their insolence to mutter!
Swallow my turtle and my beef by pounds,
And tear my ven'son like a pack of hounds,
Yet have the impudence, the brazen face
То
say I am not fitted for the place.

Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

Prepar'd for ev'ry insult, servile train,
To take a kicking, and to fawn again.

Who toils for nations may be poor indeed,
But free; who sweats for monarchs is no more
Than the gilt chamberlain, who, cloth'd and fee'd.
Stands sleek and slavish, bowing at his door.
Byron's Dante.

He was a cold, good, honourable man,
Proud of his birth, and proud of every thing;
A goodly spirit for a state divan,

A figure fit to walk before a king;

Tall, stately, form'd to lead the courtly van
On birthdays, glorious with a star and string;
The very model of a chamberlain.

Byron.

And none did love him-though to hall and bower,
He gather'd followers from far and near;
He knew them flatterers of the festal hour,
The heartless parasites of present cheer.
Byron's Childe Harold.

COURTSHIP.

And otherwhyles with amorous delights
And pleasing toyes he would her entertaine,
Now singing sweetly to surprise her sprights,
Now making layes of love and lover's paine,
Bransles, ballads, virelayes, and verses vaine!
Oft purposes, oft riddles, he devys'd;
And thousands like which flowed in his braine,
With which he fed her fancy, and entys'd
To take to his new love, and leave her old despys'd.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

His feeling wordes her feeble sense much pleased,
And softly sunk into her molten heart:
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar. Heart that is inly hurt is greatly eased

So warily a courtier speaks,
They seem to talk with halters round their necks.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

A toad-eater's an imp I dont admire;
Nor royal small-talk doth my soul desire;
I've seen my sovereign-that's enough for me.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

A simple race, they waste their toil,
For the vain tribute of a smile.

Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.
Yes-such was the man and so wretched his fate;
And thus, sooner or later, shall all have to grieve,
Who waste their morn's dew in the beams of the
great,

And expect 't will return to refresh them at eve!
Moore on the Death of Sheridan.
A mere court butterfly,

That flutters in the pageant of a monarch.
Byron's Sardanapalus. |

With hope of thing that may allegge his smart;
For pleasing wordes are like to magick art,
That doth the charmed snake in slumber lay.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Imagine with thy
Self all are to be won; otherwise mine
Advice were as unnecessary as
Thy labour. It is impossible for
The brittle mettle of women to withstand
The flattering attempts of men: only this,
Let them be ask'd, their sex requires no less;
Their modesties are to be allow'd so much.

Lilly's Sappho and Phaon.

It is your virtue, being men, to try;
And it is ours, by virtue to deny.

Drayton.

A man's a fool
If not instructed in a woman's school.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Spanish Curate.