The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk'
And these assume but valor's excrement,
To render them redoubted.

4. Thus ornament is but the gilded shore
To a most dangerous sea ; the beauteous scarf
Vailing an Indian beauty ; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.

5. I know the gentleman
To be of worth and worthy estimation;
And, not without desert, so well reputed.
I knew him as myself; for from our infancy
We have conversed and spent our hours together :
And though myself have been an idle truant,
Omitting the sweet benefit of time,
To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,
Yet hath Sir Protheus – for that's his name
Made use and fair advantage of his days:
His
years

but
young,

but his experience old ;
His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe ;
And, in a word (for far behind his worth
Come all the praises which I now bestow),
He is complete in feature and in mind,
With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

6. Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lamentest; Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.

7. Protheus. My shame and guilt confound me! Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrow Be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here. I do as truly suffer As e'er I did commit.

The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thristy goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.

11. Lord Angelo is precise ;
Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone.

Hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

12. Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

13. We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.

14. Let us be keen, and rather cut a little,
Than fell and bruise to death. Alas! this gentleman
Whom I would save had a most noble father.
Let but your honor know (whom I believe
To be most strait in virtue)
That, in the working of your own affections,
Had time cohered with place, or place with wishing,
Or that the resolute acting of

your

blood Could have attained the effect of your own purpose, Whether you

had not, sometime in your life, Erred in this point which now you censure him, And pulled the law upon you.

15. O place! oh form!
How often dost thou, with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming!

16. Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
Making both it unable for itself,
And dispossessing all my other parts
Of necessary fitness ?
So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons ;
Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive.

17. Happy thou art not: For wbat thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get; And what thou hast, forget'st.

18. Dar'st thou die ? The sense of death is most in apprehension;

And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

19. The weariest and most loathéd worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

20. Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would and we would not.

21. My business in this state Made me a looker on here in Vienna, Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble Till it o'errun the stew: laws for all faults, But faults so countenanced that the strong statutes Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, As much in mock as mark.

22. That life is better life, past fearing death, Than that which lives to fear.

23. They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad.

24. He that cornmends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop;
Who, failing there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.

25. There are a sort of men whose visages
Dọ cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be drest in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark !

26. I do know of those
That, therefore, only are reputed wise
For saying nothing

27. Mark you this, Bassanio!
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath !

LESSON CLXXII.

rage of his.

Trial Scene from the Merchant of Venice.* — SHAKSPEARE.

[The DUKE, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, SALANIO, GRATIANO.)
Duke. What, is Antonio here?
Antonio. Ready, so please your grace.

Duke. I am sorry for thee; thou art come to answer
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,
Uncapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy.

Ant. I have heard
Your grace hath taken great pains to qualify
His rigorous course; but since he stands obđúrate,
And that no lawful means can carry me
Out of his envy's reach, I do oppose
My patience to his fury; and am armed
To suffer with a quietness of spirit
The

very tyranny and
Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court.
Salanio. He's ready at the door; he comes, my lord.

[Enter Shylock.]
Duke. Make room, and let him stand before our face.
Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,
That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice
To the last hour of act; and then 't is thought
Thou 'lt show thy mercy, and remorse, more strange
Than is thy strange apparent cruelty,
And, where thou now exact'st the penalty
(Which is a pound of this poor merchant's flesh),
Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,
But, touched with human gentleness and love,
Forgive a moiety of the principal ;
Glancing an eye of pity on his losses,
That have of late so huddled on his back,
Enough to press a royal merchant down,

bond;

And pluck commiseration of his state
From brassy bosoms, and rough hearts of flint,
From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never trained
To offices of tender courtesy.
We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.

Shylock. I have possessed your grace of what I purpose;
And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn,
To have the due and forfeit of

my
If you deny it, let the danger light
Upon your charter, and your city's freedom.
You 'li ask me, why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive
Three thousand ducats : - I'll not answer that;
But
say,
it is
my

humor; is it answered ?
What if my house be troubled with a rat,
And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats
To have it baned; what, are you answered yet?
Some men there are, love not a gaping pig;
Some, that are mad, if they behold a cat;
Now for

your answer:
As there is no firm reason to be rendered,
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he, a harmless necessary cat;
So can I give no reason, nor will I not,
More than a lodged hate, and a certain loathing,
I bear Antonio, that I follow thus
A losing suit against him. Are you answered ?

Bassanio. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man,
To excuse the current of thy cruelty.

Shy. I am not bound to please thee with my answer.
Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love?
Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill ?
Bass. Every offense is not a hate at first.
Shy. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice ?

Ant. I pray you, think you question with the Jew :
You may as well stand

upon

the beach,
And bid the main flood bate its usual height;
You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To

wag their high tops, and to make no noise,
When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven;
You may as well do anything most hard,
As seek to soften that (than which what's harder ?)

go