Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'er-run and trampled on. Then, what they do in present,

20 Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;

For time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer; welcome ever smiles,

25 And farewell goes out sighing. Let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

30 One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

35 The present eye praises the present object;
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
40 And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive
And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves, 45 And drave great Mars to faction.

18. Rear: from Lat. retro, through O. Fr. riere.

31. Gawds, toys, trinkets, pieces of finery, fr. Lat. gaudium, joy; just as jewel, Fr. jouel, is properly a little joy, It. gioja.

37. Worship, to honour, reverence, look upon as possessing high worth or value

44. Missions, "descents of the deities to combat with either side, an idea probably adopted from Chapman's Homer." (Steevens.)

From JULIUS CÆSAR.

62. Mark Antony's Oration over the dead body of Cæsar.

Act III. Sc. 2.

Ant. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;
5 So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest,
10 (For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men ;)
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says, he was ambitious;

15 And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept:
20 Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

25 Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;

1. Friends: a friend is a lover, the word being the act. part. frijond of Goth. frijon, to love.

8. Answer: fr. O. E. andswarian, th. fr. and, against, and swerian, to

swear.

17. Ransoms: Fr. rançon, O. Fr. raancon, Lat. redemptio.

19. When that: the conj. that is merely the demonstrative, used to anticipate the entire expression which follows.

23. The Lupercalia, in honour of Pan, were celebrated on the Ides (13th) of February.

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
30 You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!-Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
35 And I must pause till it come back to me.

But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world: now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up

40 To such a sudden flood of mutiny.

They that have done this deed are honourable;
What private griefs they have, alas! I know not,
That made them do it; they are wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.

45 I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts;
I am no orator, as Brutus is;

But as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
50 For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;

I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
55 And bid them speak for me: But were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

36. Yesterday, O. E. gyrstandæg, Goth. gistra, Ger. gestern, Lat. hesternus.

40. Mutiny, fr. O. Fr. meute, th. fr. old partic. movitus (motus) of Lat. movere. SPECS. ENG. LIT.

42. Griefs: this word in Shakespeare has often the sense of grievances, as if from the verb aggrieve.

H

From MACBETH.

63. Macbeth's Irresolution before the Murder of Duncan.

Act I. Sc. 7.

Macb. If it were done, when 't is done, then 't were well
It were done quickly: If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
5 Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
10 To plague the inventor: This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed: then, as his host,
15 Who should against his murtherer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
20 The deep damnation of his taking-off:

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

3. Trammel up, tie up, render powerless; from trammel, a contrivance whereby horses were taught to pace or amble. Or from tramel, It. tramaglio (trans maculam, through the mesh), a kind of fishing net.

4. His surcease, cessation or conclusion. His was still the regular genitive of it (hit) at this time; though the modern form its was already in occasional use, being found eleven times in Shakespeare. That but, if only.

7. Jump, risk, chance the consequence of. Jump is also sometimes used by Shakespeare as an adverb, in the sense of just.

17. Faculties, powers, regal authority; the word, like Lat. facultas, once meant power in general.

18. Clear, pure, stainless, innocent.

23. Sightless, unseen; used in a pas. sive sense. So Tennyson, In Memoriam,

says

"The lark becomes a sightless song."

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

25 That tears shall drown the wind.-I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.

64. The Dirge in Cymbeline.-Act IV. Sc. 2.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,

Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
5 Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
10 To thee the reed is as the oak:

The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

5. Golden: the termination en of adJectives of material, golden, earthen, leathern, &c., is considered to have originated in one of the forms of the O. E. genitive of substantives.

9. Clothe: this verb is here used in the neuter sense. Few English transitive verbs are without the power of assuming a neuter meaning.

D. SONGS.

65. ARIEL'S SONG.

The Tempest.-Act V. Sc. 1.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie :

There I couch when owls do cry,

On the bat's back I do fly

5 After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

5. Summer must here mean sunset, or heat of the summer-day.