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VI

PORTRAITS.— PERSONAL.

PICTURES.

Who will not honor noble numbers, when
Verses outlive the bravest deeds of men?"-HERRICK.

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NESTOR TO HECTOR.

Nestor. I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft, Laboring for destiny, make cruel way

Through ranks of Greekish youth: and I have seen thee, As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed, Despising many forfeits and subduements,

When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' the air,

Not letting it decline on the declined:

That I have said to some my stand

ers-by,

Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life! And I have seen thee pause, and take thy breath

When that a ring of Greeks have hemmed thee in,

Like an Olympian wrestling: This have I seen

But this thy countenance, still locked in steel,

I never saw till now.

Let an old man embrace thee: And, worthy warrior, welcome to

our tents.

Cominius.

SHAKSPEARE.

CORIOLANUS.

--

I shall lack voice; the

deeds of Coriolanus

Should not be uttered feebly. It is

held,

That valor is the chiefest virtue,

and

Most dignifies the haver: if it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world

Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years,

When Tarquin made a head for
Rome, he fought
Beyond the mark of others: our
then dictator,

Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight

When with his Amazonian chin he drove

The bristled lips before him: he bestrid

An o'erpressed Roman, and in the consul's view

Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,

And struck him on his knee: in that

day's feats,

When he might act the woman in the scene,

He proved best man of the field, and for his meed

Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age

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The king is full of grace and fair regard. Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.

Cant. The courses of his youth

promised it not.

The breath no sooner left his father's body,

But that his wildness, mortified in

him,

Seemned to die too; yea, at that very

moment,

Consideration like an angel came, And whipped the offending Adam out of him;

Leaving his body as a paradise, To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Never was such a sudden scholar made:

Never came reformation in a flood, With such a heady current, scouring

faults;

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at

once,

As in this king.

Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire, the king were made a prelate;

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say, it hath been allin-all his study:

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle rendered you in music:

Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;

So that the air and practic part of life

Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it,

Since his addiction was to courses vain:

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;

His hours filled up with riots, ban-
quets, sports,

And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.
SHAKSPEARE.

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To fret thy soule with crosses and

with cares;

To eate thy heart through comfortless despairs;

To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride,

To

to run,

spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

SPENSER.

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