XXXIX. Love must die gently. I hoped, your great experience, and your years, Then since the first spring was so sweet and warm, [The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Act ii., XL. Poetic Diction. -worthiest poets Shun common and plebeian forms of speech, To clothe their matter; and together tye [Chapman. Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, Act i., Sc. 1.] XLI. Author Vanity. -the foolish Poet, that still writ All his most self-loved verse in paper royal, Or parchment ruled with lead, smooth'd with the pumice, Bound richly up, and strung with crimson strings; Never so blest as when he writ and read The ape-loved issue of his brain; and never But joying in himself, admiring ever. XLII. [Ibid., Act ii., Sc. 1.] Good Wit to be husbanded. as of lions it is said, and eagles, That when they go, they draw their seres and talons [Five lines omitted.] [Ibid., Act iii., Sc. 1.] XLIII. Impossibility of attaining, a Bar to Desire. Nothing is more ordinary, than for my Lady to love her Gentleman; or Mistress Anne, her father's man. But if a country clown coming up hither, and seeking for his lawyer in Gray's Inn, should step into the walks, and there should chance to spy some mastership! of nature; some famed Beauty, that for a time hath been the name; he would stand amazed, perhaps wish that his Joan were such, but further would not be stirred. Impossibility would stop more bold desires, And quench those sparks that else would turn to fires. XLIV. Theory of Men's choice in a Beauty. 1.—She has a most complete and perfect beauty; nor can the greatest critic in this sort find any fault with the least proportion of her face, but yet methought I was no more taken with it, than I should be with some curious well-drawn picture. 2-That is somewhat strange. 1.—In my mind, not at all; for it is not always that we are governed by what the general fancy of the world calls beauty; for each soul hath some predominant thoughts, which when they light on aught that strikes on them, there is nothing does more inflame. And as in music that pleaseth not most, which with the greatest art and skill is composed; but those airs that do resemble and stir up some dormant passion, to which the mind is addicted; so, I believe, never yet was any one much taken with a face, in which he did not espy aught that did rouse and put in motion some affection that hath ruled in his thoughts, besides those features which, only for the sake of common opinion, we are forced to say do please. [Ibid., Act iii., Sc. 3.2] 1 ["Masterpiece borne of nature."] [The arrangement of the Scenes is peculiar; this is numerically the 6th Sc.] CHARLES LAMB'S EXTRACTS FROM THE GARRICK S PLAYS NOT PRINTED BY HONE COUNTRY HOUSEWIFE'S RECEIPT ELFHEAL, woodbit, honeysuckle buds, &c., &c. Then there's devil's bit, the best of all. They say the devil bit off half the first that grew, to prevent the good design'd by it to the world. [D'Urfey. The Old Mode and the New, Act i., Sc. 1.] CONTEMPT I'll make 'em by a sullen gloomy air Believe that is contempt which is despair. A melancholy retirement, where Content & I were often quarrelling about a slender fortune. [D'Urfey. Preface. Epistle ded. to Madame Fickle, 1677.] FROM PREFACE TO MRS. BEHN'S "DUTCH LOVER" Indiscerpibility and essential Spissitudes; words which tho' I am no competent judge of for want of languages, yet I fancy strongly ought to mean just nothing. [1st ed., 1673. Preface.] A late learned Doctor, who tho' himself no great asserter of a deity (as you'll believe by that which follows), yet was observed to be continually persuading this sort of men [the rakehelly blockheaded Infidels about Town] of the necessity and truth of our religion; and being ask'd how he came to bestir himself so much this way, made answer, that it was because their ignorance and indiscreit debauch made them a scandal to the Profession of Atheism, [Ibid.] |