To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow

MACBETH V. 5.

THERE is no funeral so sad to follow as the funeral of our own youth, which we have been pampering with fond desires, ambitious hopes, and all the bright berries that hang in poisonous clusters over the path of life.

O THAT I were an orange-tree,

That busy plant!

Then should I ever laden be,

And never want

LANDOR.

Some fruit for Him that dresseth me.

But we are still too young or old;
The man is gone,

Before we do our wares unfold:

So we freeze on,

Until the grave increase our cold.

GEORGE HERBERT.

IF

Will Fortune never come with both hands full?

2 KING HENRY IV. iv. 4.

F I had no duties and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.

DR. JOHNSON.

CRABBED age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.

The Passionate Pilgrim.

BUT

For I myself am best

When least in company.

TWELFTH NIGHT i. 4.

UT the most ordinary cause of a Single Life, is Liberty; especially, in certain self-pleasing and humorous Minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near, to think their Girdles, and Garters, to be Bonds and Shackles. Unmarried men are best Friends; best Masters; best Servants; but not always best Subjects: for they are light to run away; and almost all Fugitives are of that Condition.

BACON.

АH wretched, and too solitary he
Who loves not his own company:
He'll feel the weight of't many a day
Unless he call in sin or vanity
To help to bear 't away.

O Solitude, first state of humankind!
Which blest remain'd till man did find
Even his own helper's company.

As soon as two (alas!) together joined
The Serpent made up three.

COWLEY.

Remember

First to possess his books; for without them

He's but a sot, as I am.

TEMPEST iii. 2.

H

ERE were editions esteemed as being the first, and there stood others scarcely less regarded as being the last and best. Here was a book valued because it had the author's final improvements, and there another which (strange to tell!) was in request because it had them not. One was precious because it was a folio, another because it was a duodecimo; some because they were tall, some because they were short; the merit of this lay in the title-page, of that in the arrangement of the letters in the word Finis.

SCOTT.

THAT Weight of wood, with leather coat o'erlaid,
Those awful clasps, of solid metal made,
The close-pressed leaves, unclosed for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-filled page,
On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,
Where yet the title stands in tarnished gold;
These all a sage and laboured work proclaim,
A painful candidate for lasting fame ;
No idle wit, no trifling verse can lurk
In the deep bosom of that weighty work.

CRABBE.

Be checked for silence,

But never taxed for speech.

ALL'S WELL i. I.

LOOKING round on the noisy inanity of the

world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there each in his department; silently thinking, silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of!

CARLYLE.

But now, made free from them, next her before,
Peaceful and young, Herculean silence bore
His craggy club: which up aloft, he hild;
With which, and his fore-finger's charm, he still'd
All sounds in air, and left so free mine ears
That I might hear the music of the spheres,
And all the angels singing out of heaven.

CHAPMAN.