563. You must sow with the hand and not with the basket. (Manu serendum, non thylaco.-Er. Ad. 647. Dispense your bounty carefully, not by wholesale.)

I was desirous to prevent the uncertainness of life and time by uttering rather seeds than plants; nay, and furder (as the proverb is) by sowing with the basket than with the hand. (Let. to Dr. Playfer, 1606.)

564. Mentiuntur multa cantores. Fair pleasing speech true. (Er. Ad. 421. Poets tell many lies.)

If I should tell the beauty of your eyes,

The age to come would say, This poet lies. (Sonnet xvii.)

Nay, I have verses too, I thank Biron:

The numbers true; and were the numbering too

I were the fairest goddess on the ground!

I am compared to twenty thousand fairs. (L. L. L. v. 1.)

Those lines which I have writ before do lie,

Even those that said I could not love you dearer. (Son. cxv.)

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

With feigning voice verses of feigning love. (M. N. D. i. 1.)

And. I do not know what poetical is. Is it a true thing? Touch. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning. (As Y. L. iii. 3.)

Poets feign of bliss and joy. (3 H. VI. i. 3.)

565. It is nought if it be in verse.
O he hath drawn my picture in the letter!
Much in the letters, nothing in the praise.

Anything like?

(L. L. L. v. 1.)

Cin. I am Cinna the poet; I am Cinna the poet. Fourth Cit. Tear him for his bad verses! tear him for his bad verses! (Jul. Cœs. iii. 2.)

(And see As Y. L. iii. 3, 7–16; and comp. with No. 564.)

566. Leonis catulum ne alas.-Er. Ad. 451. (Feed not the lion's whelp. Aristophanes appl. to Alcibiades.)

Two of your whelps fell curs of bloody kind.

(Tit. And. ii. 4, and iv. 1, 95.)

We were two lions littered in one day.

(Jul. Cæs. ii. 2; ii. 3, 9, 10.)

The young whelp of Talbot's. (1 H. VI. iv. 7.)

Thou, Leonatus, art the lion's whelp. (Cymb. v. 5.)

567. He courtes a fury.

(See No. 43.)

568. Dij laneos habent pedes.-Er. Ad. 343. (The gods have woollen feet-i.e. steal on us unawares, because their vengeance often does so.)

569. The weary ox setteth strong. (Bos lassus fortius figit pedem.—Er. Ad. 42. The weary ox plants his foot more firmly—i.e. heavily. A young man should not challenge an old man to conflict, or he may suffer all the more.)

I am given, sir, secretly to understand that your younger brother, Orlando, hath a disposition to come in disguised against me to try a fall. .. Your brother is but young and tender, and for your love I should be loath to foil him, as I must for mine own honour if he come in. (As Y. L. i. 2 and 3.)

570. A man's customes are the mouldes where his fortune is cast.

(Compare the Ess. Of Custom and Education with such passages as the following:-Cor. ii. 3, 126; Cymb. iv. 2, 10; Ham. iii. 4, 161–170; i. 4, 12-26; Oth. i. 3, 230.)

The glass of fashion and the mould of form. (Hạm. iii. 1.)

571. Beware of the vinegar of sweet wine.

Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall. (Rom. Jul. i. 5.)
Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds.
The sweets we wish for turn to loathed sours.

(See No. 910.)

(Son. xciv.)

(Lucrece.)

572. Adoraturi sedeant.-Er. Ad. 22. (Let the worshippers sit-Steadily persevere in what you have religiously undertaken.)

Thus, Indian-like,

Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,

But knows of him no more. (Al's W. i. 3.)

Thy love to me 's religious. (Ib. ii. 3.)

He's a devout coward, religious in it. (Tw. N. iii. 4.)

573. To a foolish people a preest possest.

Mad slanderers by mad ears believed. (Sonnet cxl.)
(See John, iv. 2, 140–154.)

574. The packes may be set right by the way.

575. It is the catts nature and the wenches fault.

If the cat will after kind,

So be sure will Rosalind. (As Y. L. iii. 2, verses.)

576. Cæna fercula nostra.

577. Nam nimium curo nam cænæ fercula nostræ

Mallem convivis quam placuisse cocis.

(Martial, ix. 83.)

(The dinner is for eating, and my wish is

That guests and not the cooks should like the dishes.)

The fault has been that some of (the poets), out of too much zeal for antiquity, have tried to train the modern languages into the ancient measures (hexameter, elegiac, sapphic, &c.); measures incompatible with the structure of the languages themselves, and no less offensive to the ear. In these things the judgment of the sense is to be preferred to the precepts of art; as the poet says, 'Cæna fercula nostra' (&c. as above). (De Aug. vi. 2; Spedding, iv. 443.)

1

578. Al confessor, medico e advocato non si de tener il re celato. (From the confessor, the doctor, and the lawyer, one should hide nothing.)

'He (Shakespeare) seems,' says Dennis, 'to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony-that is, the harmony of blank verse, &c. (See Dr. Johnson's preface to the plays.)

I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true.

(M. M. iii. 1.)

One of your convent, his confessor, give me this instance.

(Ib. iv. 4.)

Bran. Here is a warrant from the king to attach the bodies of the duke's confessor, John de la Car, one Gilbert Peck bis chancellor . . . . and a monk of the Chartreux

Wol. Stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you have collected out of the Duke of Buckingham.

(See Hen. VIII. i. 2, how Buckingham is betrayed by his 'surveyor' and his 'confessor.")

580. Assaj ben balla a chi fortuna suona. well to whom fortune plays a tune.)

(He dances

Ben. Will measure them a measure and be gone.
Rom. Give me a torch! I am not for this ambling;
Being heavy, I will bear the light.

Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
Rom. Not 1; believe me, you have dancing shoes

With nimble soles; I have a sole of lead

So stakes me to the ground I cannot move. (R. Jul. i. 4.)

581. A young barber and an old physician.

Though love use reason for his physician,2 he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am I.

(Falstaff's letter, M. Wiv. ii. 1.)

582. Buon vin cattiva testa dice, il griego. (Good wine makes a bad head, says the Greek.)

I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! (Oth. ii. 3.)

(See also Tw. N. Kins. iii. 1, 10–53. See folio 99, 777.)

583. Buon vin favola lunga. (Good wine talks long -makes a long tongue.)

Drunk and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow 1-0 thou invisible

1 No. 579 omitted. See footnote, p. 155.

2 Mr. Collier's text; 'precisian' in other editions.

spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee-devil! (Oth. ii. 3.)

(And see Ant. Cleo. ii. 7, 1. 95, 103; and All's W. ii. 5, 35.)
The red wine must first rise

In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have them
(Hen. VIII. i. 4.)

Talk us to silence.

584. Good watch chaseth yll adventure.

Puc. Improvident soldiers! had your watch been good, This sudden mischief never could have fallen

Question, my lords, no further of the case,

How, or which way; 'tis sure they found some place
But weakly guarded, where the breach was made.

(1 Hen. VI. ii. 1, 39–74.)

585. Campo rotto paga nuova.

fresh pay.)

(The camp broken up,

(Ant. Cl. iv. 9.)

Let the world rank me in register, a master-leaver.

Methinks thou art more honest now than wise:
For by oppressing and betraying me
Thou mightest have sooner got another service;
For many so arrive at second masters.

'Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban,

(Tim. Ath. iv. 3.)

Has a new master-get a new man. (Temp. ii. 2, song.) (See for new masters, Mer. Ven. ii. v. 110, 149.)

586. Better be martyr than confessor.

587. L'Imbassador no porta pena. (The ambassador does not incur punishment-The person of an envoy or herald was sacred.)

(For heralds, see Montjoy, Hen. V. iii.; vi. 113, &c. ; iv. 3, 120; iv. 7, 15; 1 Hen. VI. i. 1, 45; iv. 7, 51; 2 Hen. VI. iv. 2, 179, &c.)