Private credit is wealth; public honour is security. The feather that adorns the royal bird supports its flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth. Letters of Junius. Letter xlii. Affair of the Falkland Islands. 'Tis well to be merry and wise, "Tis well to be honest and true; "T is well to be off with the old love. Before you are on with the new. Lines used by Maturin as the motto to "Bertram," produced at Drury Lane, 1816. Still so gently o'er me stealing, Mem'ry will bring back the feeling, Spite of all my grief revealing, That I love thee, — that I dearly love thee still. Opera of La Sonnambula. Happy am I; from care I'm free! Why ar' n't they all contented like me? It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for. Opera of La Bayadère. Epitaph on a child who died at the age of three weeks (Cheltenham Churchyard). An Austrian army, awfully array'd, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavour engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce furious fray. How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labour low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious numbers notice nought, Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Et cætera, et cætera, et cætera. Alliteration, or the Siege of Belgrade: a Rondeau.1 But were it to my fancy given To rate her charms, I'd call them heaven; She hath a way, Ann Hathaway, To be heaven's self Ann hath a way. Attributed to Shakespeare. I had a hat. It was not all a hat, - Yet still I wore it on.2 1 These lines having been incorrectly printed in a London publication, we have been favoured by the author with an authentic copy of them.Wheeler's Magazine, vol. i. p. 244. (Winchester, England, 1828.) 2 A parody on Byron's "Darkness," the first line of which is, "I had a dream which was not all a dream."- Author unknown. TRANSLATIONS. PILPAY (OR BIDPAI.)1 WE ought to do our neighbour all the good we can. If you do good, good will be done to you; but if you do evil, the same will be measured back to you again.2 Dabschelim and Pilpay. Chap. 1. It has been the providence of Nature to give this crea ture [the cat] nine lives instead of one. The Greedy and Ambitious Cat. Fable iii. There is no gathering the rose without being pricked by the thorns.* The Two Travellers. Chap. ii. Fable vi. Wise men say that there are three sorts of persons who are wholly deprived of judgment, they who are ambitious of preferments in the courts of princes; they who make use of poison to show their skill in curing it; and they who intrust women with their secrets. Men are used as they use others. Ibid. The King who became Just. Fable ix. What is bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh.5 The Two Fishermen. Fable xiv. Guilty consciences always make people cowards." The Prince and his Minister. Chap. iii. Fable iii. 1 Pilpay is supposed to have been a Brahmin gymnosophist, and to have lived several centuries before Christ. The earliest form in which his Fables appear is in the Pancha-tantra and Hitopadesa of the Sanskrit. The first translation was into the Pehlvi language, and thence into the Arabic, about the seventh century. The first English translation appeared in 1570. 2 And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Matthew vii. 2. See Heywood page 16. 4 See Herrick, page 203. Whoever... prefers the service of princes before his duty to his Creator, will be sure, early or late, to repent in vain. The Prince and his Minister. Chap. iii. Fable iii. There are some who bear a grudge even to those that do them good. A Religious Doctor. Fable vi. There was once, in a remote part of the East, a man who was altogether void of knowledge and experience, yet presumed to call himself a physician. The Ignorant Physician. Fable viii. He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.1 Ibid. Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. Choice of Friends. Chap. iv. That possession was the strongest tenure of the law. The Cat and the two Birds. Chap. v. Fable iv. (Translation by J. Banks, M. A., with a few alterations.3) We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true. The Theogony. Line 27. On the tongue of such an one they shed a honeyed dew, and from his lips drop gentle words. Line 82. Night, having Sleep, the brother of Death." 1 See Butler, page 214. Bohn's Classical Library. Line 754 2 See Cibber, page 296. 5 See Shelley, page 567. From whose eyelids also as they gazed dropped love.1 The Theogony. Line 910. Both potter is jealous of potter and craftsman of craftsman; and poor man has a grudge against poor man, and poet against poet.2 Works and Days. Line 25. Fools! they know not how much half exceeds the whole.' Line 40. For full indeed is earth of woes, and full the sea; and in the day as well as night diseases unbidden haunt mankind, silently bearing ills to men, for all-wise Zeus hath taken from them their voice. So utterly impossible is it to escape the will of Zeus. They died, as if o'ercome by sleep. Line 101. Line 116. Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.* Line 240. For himself doth a man work evil in working evils for another. Line 265. Badness, look you, you may choose easily in a heap: level is the path, and right near it dwells. But before Virtue the immortal gods have put the sweat of man's brow; and long and steep is the way to it, and rugged at the first. Line 287. This man, I say, is most perfect who shall have understood everything for himself, after having devised what may be best afterward and unto the end. Line 293. Let it please thee to keep in order a moderate-sized farm, that so thy garners may be full of fruits in their season. 1 See Milton, page 246. 2 See Gay, page 349. Line 304. 3 Pittacus said that half was more than the whole. - DIOGENES LAERTIUS: Pittacus, ii. 4 One man's wickedness may easily become all men's curse. PUBLIUS SYRUS: Maxim 463. |