DE

Befence. Shakespeare.

causes of Defence, 'tis best to weigh

So the proportions of Defence are fill'd;
Which of a weak and niggardly projection
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth.

Beference. Shenstone.

EFERENCE is the most complicate, the most in. direct, and the most elegant of all Compliments.

EFERENCE often shrinks and withers as much upon

upon the touch of one's finger.

The Deity. Milton.

AND thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer,

Before all temples, the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st.

REPINE not, nor reply:

View not what Heaven ordains with Reason's eye,
Too bright the object is; the distance is too high.
The man, who would resolve the work of Fate,
May limit number, and make crooked straight:
Stop thy inquiry then, and curb thy sense,
Nor let dust argue with Omnipotence.

The Deity.

FROM Nature's constant or eccentric laws,

The thoughtful soul this general inference draws, That an Effect must pre-suppose a Cause: And, while she does her upward flight sustain, Touching each link of the continued chain, At length she is oblig'd and forc'd to see A First, a Source, a Life, a Deity;

What has for ever been, and must for ever be.

IN the vast, and the minute, we see

The unambiguous footsteps of the God,
Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing,
And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.

A

ND yet was every falt'ring tongue of man,

Almighty Father! silent in thy praise!

Thy works themselves would raise a general voice,
Even in the depth of solitary woods

By human foot untrod, proclaim thy power,
And to the quire celestial Thee resound,

The eternal Cause, Support, and End of all!

The Beity. Thomson.

AIL, Source of Being! Universal Soul

HALL

Of Heaven and Earth! Essential Presence, hail! To Thee I bend the knee; to Thee my thoughts Continual climb; who, with a Master hand, Hast the great whole into perfection touch'd.

ITH what an awful world-revolving power

WWere hast the unwieldy planets launch'd along

The illimitable void! Thus to remain,
Amid the flux of many thousand years,
That oft has swept the toiling race of men,
And all their labour'd monuments away,
Firm, unremitting, matchless in their course;
To the kind-temper'd change of Night and Day,
And of the Seasons ever stealing round,
Minutely faithful: Such the all-perfect Hand!
That pois'd, impels, and rules the steady whole.

SHAM

HAME is a feeling of profanation. Friendship, Love, and Piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

WEAK

Delicacy. Greville.

EAK men often, from the very principle of their weakness, derive a certain Susceptibility, Delicacy, and Taste, which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.

THAT comfort comes too late;
Tis like a pardon after execution;

That gentle physic, given in time, had cur'd me;
But now I am past all comfort here, but prayers.

THE Heavens and Earth are mingling-God! oh God!
What have we done? yet spare!

Hark! even the forest beasts howl forth their pray'r!
The dragon crawls from out his den,

To herd in terror innocent with men ;

And the birds scream their agony through air.

WHE

WHEN our vices quit us, we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them.

WE strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as

from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case, we are both judge, jury, and executioner; and where Sophistry cannot overcome the first, or Flattery the second, Self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing a third; a bribe that in this case is never refused, because she always comes up to the price.

Delusion.

Shakespeare.

O, WHO can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare Imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic Summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell Sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.

Delusion. Shakespeare.

ANGEROUS Conceits are, in their natures, poisons,

D Which, at the fine, its area re found to distante,

But with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulphur.

Belusion. Sir Philip Sidney.

IT many times falls out, that we deem ourselves much

deceived in others, because we first deceived ourselves. Belusion. Shakespeare.

THIS is the excellent Foppery of the World! that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on.

O THOUGHTS of men accurst; Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.

OW oft that Virtue, which some Women boast,
And pride themselves in, is but an Empty Name,

No real good: in thought alone possess'd.
Safe in the want of charms, the homely Dame,
Secure from the seducing arts of man,

Deceives herself and thinks she's passing chaste;
Wonders how others e'er could fall, yet when
She talks most loud about the noisy nothing,
Look on her Face, and there you read her Virtue.

FOR love of Grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank Corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.

IDO despise these Demagogues, that fret
The angry Multitude: they are but as
The froth upon the mountain-wave-the bird
That shrieks upon the sullen tempest's wing.

I ALONE am left on earth!

To whom nor Relative nor Blood remains,

No!—not a kindred drop that runs in human veins.

Byron.

WHAT is the worst of woes that wait on Age?

What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each lov'd one blotted from life's page, And be alone on Earth, as I am now.

Desolation.

Byron.

My mother Earth!

ye.

And thou, fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love
And thou, the bright eye of the Universe,
That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart.

Desolation. Maturin.

THW fountain of my heart dried up within me,
With nought that loved me, and with nought to love,

I stood upon the desert earth alone.

And in that deep and utter Agony,

Though then, than ever most unfit to die,

I fell upon my knees, and prayed for Death.

UN

NHAPPY he! who from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of Death. Day after day,
Sad on the jutting eminence he sits,

And views the main that ever toils below;

Still fondly forming in the farthest verge,

Where the round ether mixes with the wave,

Ships, dim-discovered, dropping from the clouds;
At evening, to the setting sun he turns

A mournful eye, and down his dying heart
Sinks helpless.

The brave Despair.

Despair. Milton.

M'Infinite wrath, and infinite Despair?

E miserable! which way shall I fly

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell?
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.