The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies

L'uso è tiranno della ragione. (Custom is the tyrant of reason.) Custom is the magistrate of men's actions. (Ess. Of Custom.)

The tyrant, Custom. (Oth. i. 3.)

Piglia la rosa e lascia star la spina. (Gather the rose and leave the thorn.)

When you have our roses, you barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves. (All's W. iv. 2.)

Chi serve al commune ha cattivo padrone. (He who serves the commonwealth has a bad master.)

Men in great place are thrice servants... so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times, &c. (Ess. Of Great Place.)

(Compare Hen. V. iv. 1.)

Il savio fa della necessità virtù. (The wise man makes a virtue of necessity.)

Are you content . . . to make a virtue of necessity?

All places that the eye of heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus.

(Tw. G. Ver. iv. 1.)

Sol la clemenza a Dio s'aggualia. (Clemency alone is most like God.)

Earthly power then doth show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. (Mer. Ven. iv. i.)

All precepts concerning kings are comprehended in these remembrances; remember thou art a man; remember thou art God's vicegerent. The one bridleth their power, the other their will. (Ess. Of Empire.)

Pensa di te e poi mi dirai. (Think of thyself, and then tell me.)
Go to your bosom;

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault; if it confess

A natural guiltiness such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life. (Mea. Mea. ii. 2.)

I primi fatti sono di quegli che li commettono, i secondi, di chi non gli castiga. (The first faults are those which concern the persons who commit them; the second are those of the persons who do not punish them.)

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

Why, every fault's condemned ere it be done:

Mine were the very cipher of a function.

To fine the fault . . . and let go by the actor. (M. M. ii. 2.)

Lunga via, lunga bugia. (A long voyage, a long falsehood.)
Travellers ne'er lie,

Though fools at home condemn them. (Temp. iii. 3.)

A mal uso rompigli le gambe. (Of a bad custom break the legs.) A custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.

(Ham. i. 1.)

SPANISH PROVERBS IN THE PLAYS BUT NOT IN THE PROMUS.'

De hambre poco vi morir, di mucho comer cien mil. (Of hunger I have seen few die; of surfeits a hundred thousand.) They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. (Mer. Ven. i. 2, and other places.)

Humo y muger parlera echan el hombre de su casa fuere. (Smoke and a chattering wife will drive him out of his house.)

O he's as tedious as . . . a railing wife, a smoky house.

(1 Hen. IV. iii. 1.) En consegas sas parades tienen orejas. (In councils the walls have

ears.)

No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear without warning. (Mid. N. D. v. 1.)

Viene Dios a ver nos sin campanilla. (God visits us without [ringing] a bell.)

The bell invites me :

Hear it not Duncan, 'tis a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell. (Macb. ii. 3.)

Reniego de grillos aunque sean de oro.

though they be of gold.)

(Translated in Promus, No. 475.)

(I detest all fetters,

Las honras quanto crecen mas hambre ponen. (As honours

grow they increase thirst.)

To be thirsty after tottering honour. (Per. iii. 4.)

Escritura es buena memoria. (Writing is good memory.)

Writing maketh the exact man. (Ess. Of Study.)

The help of the memory is writing.. It is of great service in studies to bestow diligence in setting down commonplaces, &c.

From the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there ..

My tables-meet it is I set it down,

(Advt. L. v. 5.)

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! (Ham. i. v.)

I will make a brief of it in my note-book. (Mer. Wiv. i. 1.)

Set in a note-book, learned, and conned by rote. (Jul. Cæs. iv. 3, 97.)

Un amor saca otro. (One love drives out another.)

As one nail by strength drives out another,

So the remembrance of a former love

Is by a newer object quite forgotten. (Tw. G. Ver. ii. 5.)

Desque naci llorè y cada dia nace porque. (When I was born I cried, and every day shows why.)

Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air

We wawl and cry. I'll preach to thee: mark me.

Glo. Alack, alack the day!

Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools. (Lear, iv. 6.)

Palabras azucarades por mas son amargas. (Sugared words are often bitter.)

Hide not thy poison with such sugared words. (2 Hen. VI. iii. 2.)

APPENDIX D.

THE RETIRED COURTIER.

His golden locks hath Time to silver turnde
O time too swift! O swiftnes never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst Time and Age hath ever spurnd,
But spurnd in vaine; youth waneth by encreasing.
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seene,
Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever greene.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
And lover's sonets turne to holy psalmes.
A man at armes must now serve on his knees,

And feed on praiers' which are age's almes;
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell

He'll teach his swaines this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my soveraigne well!
Curst be the soul that thinks her any wrong!
Goddes, allow this aged man his right,

To be your beadsman now, that was your knight.

(From Dowland's First Book of Songs, pub. 1600, and reprinted for the Percy Society, 1844.)

Mr. Collier remarks:

These lines certainly had some personal application, and read as if they had been written for Lord Burghley, when, in his old age, he withdrew from court; excepting that the subject of them must have been a soldier, if we interpret the second stanza literally. (See respecting the retirement of Lord Burghley in 1591, Hist. of Eng. Dramatic Poetry and the Stage, i. 283). It seems to have been occasioned by domestic affliction; and during his melancholy Lord Burghley resided in some cottage near his splendid residence at Theobalds, until he was visited by the Queen, to induce him to return to court.

"Praiers' here, as frequently in Shakespeare and in most authors of the time, is to be read a dissyllable.-J. P. COLLIER.

2 It does not appear what divinity is addressed; probably the Queen, under the character of Minerva.-J. P. COLLIER.

NOTES.

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Verse 1, 1.1 The change of colour in hair by age has only been found noticed by Bacon (Nat. Hist. Cen. IX. 851) and in the Plays of Shakespeare. Silver hair: The silver livery of advised age' (2 Hen. VI. v. 2, and Tit. And. iii. 1, 260). Silver beard: 2 H. IV. i. 43; Hen. 1'. iii. 1, 36; Jul. Caes. iii. 1; Tr. Cr. i. 3, 295. See Promus, No. 422.