FALSITY IN THE GARB OF TRUTH.

And these assume but valour's excrement

To render them redoubted! Look on beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crisped snaky golden locks
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.

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The Merchant of Venice, Act iii. Sc. 2, 1. 73.

Inconstancy of Worldly Friendships.

In many a turning of the wheel of God
My fate revolves and changes all its mood;
E'en as the moon's face never keepeth still
For but two nights in one position fixed,
But from its hiding-place first comes as new,
With brightening face, and thenceforth waxeth full;
And when it gains its noblest phase of all,

Wanes off again and comes to nothingness.

SOPHOCLES, Fragments, 1, 713.

WORLD, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,

Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,

Whose house, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise,
Are still together, who twin, as 'twere, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,

On a dissension of a doit, break out

To bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes,

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep

To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends

And interjoin their issues. So with me:

My birth-place hate I, and my love 's upon

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!

you

Have you conspired, have with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?

Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sister's vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time

For parting us, O, is it all forgot?

All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:

Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iii. Sc. 2, 1. 195.

'Tis not ten years gone

Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and in two years after
Were they at wars: it is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul,
Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs
And laid his love and life under my foot,
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by —
You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember

[To Warwick When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears, Then check'd and rated by Northumberland, Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy? 'Northumberland, thou ladder by the which My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;' Though then, God knows, I had no such intent, But that necessity so bow'd the state That I and greatness were compell'd to kiss : 'The time shall come,' thus did he follow it, 'The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, Shall break into corruption: so went on,

Foretelling this same time's condition

And the division of our amity.

Second Part of King Henry IV., Act iii. Sc. 1, 1. 57.

INCONSTANCY OF WORLDLY FRIENDSHIPS.

Duke Senior. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gored.

First Lord.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke S.

But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

First Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream;

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