FLATTERERS Rebuked.

Why do ye flatter a belief into me,

That I am all that is?-"The world's my crea

ture;

The trees bring forth their fruits when I saySummer;

The wind, that knows no limit but his wildness,

At my command moves not a leaf; the sea, With his proud mountain-waters envying heaven,

When I say still

rors!"

runs into crystal mir

-Why, ye bubbles,

That with my least breath break, no more remember'd!

Ye moths, that fly about my flame and perish!
Ye golden canker-worms, that eat my honours,
Living no longer than my spring of favour,—
Why do ye make me God—that can do no-
thing?
Beaumont and Fletcher.

A FLATTERER.

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant,
And, all tame, a flatterer.

Ben Jonson.

EVILS OF VICE.

Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph
Make atheists of mankind.

Dryden.

ENVY.

There is in princes' courts a lean-faced monster
Term'd Envy, reigning in unworthy breasts,
To fame's heroic sons. Such as know to cringe
With subtle motion to their prince's smiles,
Adore his footsteps and his awful nods,
And can, like asps, instil into his ears
A sweet yet killing venom; these thin souls,
When the blunt soldier has, on piles of wounds
Built up his country's peace, whisper-Beware
In time, my lord, lest he do grow too great!
Glapthorne.

FAME-WHAT IS IT?

Fame! What is that, if courted for herself? Less than a vision; a mere sound, an echo, That calls with mimic voice, through woods and labyrinths,

Her cheated lovers; lost and heard by fits,

But never fix'd: a seeming nymph, yet nothing.

Hughes.

E

THE POWER OF CREDULITY.

Blessed credulity, thou great great god of error, Thou art the strong foundation of huge wrongs, To thee give I my vows and sacrifice;

By thee, great deity, he doth believe

Falsehoods, that falsehood's self could not invent;

And from that misbelief doth draw a course T'o'erwhelm e'en virtue, truth, and sanctity. Let him go on, blest stars, 'tis meet he fall, Whose blindfold judgment hath no guide at all. Machen.

DRUNKENNESS.

It weaks the brain, it spoils the memory,
Hasting on age, and wilful poverty:

It drowns thy better parts, making thy name
To foes a laughter, to thy friends a shame.
'Tis virtue's poison, and the bane of trust;
The match of wrath, the fuel unto lust.
Quite leave this vice, and turn not to't again,
Upon presumption of a stronger brain;
For he that holds more wine than others can,
I rather count a hogshead than a man.

Randolph.

A WITCH AND HER WAYS.

Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell,
Down in a pit o'ergrown with brakes and briars,
Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey,

Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnelhouse,

Where you shall find her sitting in her fourm As fearful and melancholic, as that

She is about; with caterpillars' kells,

And knotty cobwebs, rounded in with spells.
Then she steals forth to relief, in the fogs
And rotten mists, upon the fens and bogs,
Down to the drownèd lands of Lincolnshire;
To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their
farrow;

The housewife's tun not work, nor the milk

churn;

Writhe chil 'ren's wrists, and nick their breath

in sleep,

Get vials of their blood; and where the sea
Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms,
Planted about her, in the wicked seat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold.

And all her wiles and turns. The venom'd

plants

Wherewith she kills; where the sad mandrake

grows,

Whose groans are deathful; the dead, numbing nightshade;

The stupefying hemlock; adder's tongue,

And martegan; the shrieks of luckless owls We hear, and croaking night-crows in the air;

Green-bellied snakes; blue fire-drakes in the sky;

And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings;
The scaly beetles, with their habergeons,
That make a humming murmur as they fly;
There, in the stocks of trees, white fays do
dwell,

And spang-long elves that dance about a pool,
With each a little changeling in their arms;
The airy spirits play with falling stars,

And mount the sphere of fire, to kiss the

moon;

While she sits reading by the glow-worm's light,