Tis nought but fhews that ignorance esteems:
The thing poffefs'd, is not the thing it seems.
Ignorance, that fometimes makes the hypocrite,
Wants never mischief; though it oft want fear :
For whilft we think faith made to answer wit,
Obferve the justice that doth follow it.
Lord Brooke's Alaham.
Oh, to confefs, we know not what we should,
Is half excufe; we know not, what we would.
Heaven pities ignorance;
She's ftill the first, that has her pardon fign'd:
All fins elfe fee their faults, fhe's only blind.
Middleton's No Help like a Woman's.
Ignorance, when it hath purchas'd honour,
It cannot wield it.
Webfler's Dutchess of Malfy. Can unjuft ignorance offer fo much Wrong to itself? yet I have heard that fuch, For whom no language can be plain enough, Praise nought, but intricate and clouded stuff; As if that confcious to their own weak sense, Because they know not perfect eloquence, And yet would feem; they think that best must be, That's fartheft off from their capacity.
May on Rutter's Shepherd's Holyday.
But 'tis fome justice to afcribe to chance
The wrongs you must expect from ignorance:
None can the moulds of their creation chufe,
We therefore should mens ignorance excufe,
When born too low, to reach at things fublime; 'Tis rather their misfortune than their crime.
Sir W. Davenant on E. of Orrery.
I, alas, was ignorant of thee,
As men have ever been of things most excellent;
Making fuch judgment on thy beauty, as
Aftronomers on stars ;
Who, when their better ufe they could not know,
Believ'd that they were only made for fhew.
Sir W. Davenant's Fair Favourite.
IMAGINATION.
Lovers and madmen have fuch feething brains,
Such fhaping fantafies, that apprehend
More than cool reafon ever comprehends,
The lunatick, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One fees more devils than vaft hell can hold,
The madman; while the lover, all as frantick,
See Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rowling,
Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to fhape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath ftrong imagination,
That if he would but apprehend fome joy,
It comprehends fome bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining fome fear,
How easy is a bufh, fuppos'd a bear?
Shakespear's Midfummer Night's Dream.
My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glafs,
Wherein m'imaginations run like fands,
Filling up time; but then are turn'd and turn'd:
So that I know not what to ftay upon,
Johnfon's Every Man in his Humour.
Whilft yet mine eyes do furfeit with delight,
My wofull heart imprifon'd in my breast,
Wifheth to be tran-formed to my fight;
That it, like thofe, by looking might be bleft:
But whilft mine eyes thus greedily do gaze,
Finding their objects over-foon depart,
Thefe now the others happiness do praise,
Wishing themselves that they had been my heart;
That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes;
As covetous the other's ufe to have:
But finding nature their requeft denies ;
This to each other mutually they crave;
That fince the one cannot the other be,
That eyes could think, or that my heart could fee.
Drayton's Ideas. Th'o'er-watch'd weakness of the fick conceit, Is that, which makes fmall beauty seem so great; Like things which hid in troubled waters lie, Which crook'd, feem straight; if ftraight, the contrary: And thus our vain imagination fhews it,
As it conceives it, not as judgment knows it.
Drayton's Matilda to King John.
Working in man's decayed faculties,
Cuts out and shapes illufive fantafies;
And our weak apprehenfions, like wax
Receive the form, and prefently convey
Unto our dull imagination :
And hereupon we ground a thousand lies,
As that we fee deyils rattling in their chains;
Ghofts of dead men, variety of spirits;
When our own guilty confcience is the hell,
And our black thoughts, the caverns where they dwell.
Day's Law Tricks.
Imagination works; how she can frame
Things which are not; methinks fhe ftands afore me,
And by the quick idea of my mind,
Were my skill pregnant, I could draw her picture. Webfter's White Devil.
Odds in conceit: Conceit, an instrument,
Which though phantaftick, breeds realities.
The pregnant mother's ftrong imagination,
Hath giv'n her womb a real alteration.
The little Ethiop Infant had not been
Black in his cradle, had he not been firft
Black in the mother's ftrong imagination.
"Tis thought, the hairy child that's fhewn about,
Came by the mother's thinking on the picture
Of Saint John Baptift in his camel's coat.
See we not beafts conceive, as they do fancy
The prefent colours plac'd before their eyes?
We owe py'd colts unto the vary'd horse-cloth;
And the white partridge to the neighb'ring fnow.
Fancy can fave or kill; it hath clos'd up
Wounds when the balfam could not, and without
The aid of falves: to think hath been a cure.
For witchcraft then, that's all done by the force
Of mere imagination. That which can
Alter the courfe of nature, I prefume
You'll grant, shall bear more rule in petty hazards.
Cartwright's Ordinary.
IMPRISONMENT.
Nay, be thou fure, I'll well requite thy kindness ;
For that it made my imprisonment a pleasure 3
Ay, fuch a pleasure, as incaged birds
Conceive, when after many moody thoughts,
At laft by notes of houfhold harmony,
They quite forget their lofs of liberty.
Shakespear's Third Part of King Henry VI.
For as thefe tow'rs our bodies do inclofe,
So our fouls prifons verily are those;
Our bodies ftopping that celestial light,
As thefe do hinder our exterior fight:
Whereon death feizing, doth discharge the debt,
And us at bleffed liberty doth fet.
Drayton's Jane Grey to Gildford Dudley.
→→→→→ Captivity,
That comes with honour, is true liberty.
Malfinger and Field's Fatal Dowry.
A prifon's to a grave! when dead, we are
With folemn pomp brought thither; and our heirs,
Masking their joy in falfe diffembled tears,
Weep o'er the hearfe but earth no fooner covers
The earth brought thither, but they turn away
With inward fmiles, the dead no more remember'd:
So enter'd into a prison.
Mafinger's Maid of Honour.
O that I were no farther fenfible
mis'ries than you are! you like beafts Feel only ftings of hunger, and complain not But when you're empty: But your narrow fouls, If you have any, cannot comprehend
How infupportable the torments are,
Which a free and noble foul made captive, fuffers:
Moft mis'rable men! and what am I then,
That envy you? fetters though made of gold,
Exprefs bafe thraldom; and all delicates
Prepar'd by Median cooks for epicures,
When not our own, are bitter quilts fill'd high
With goffamire and rofes; cannot yield
The body foft repofe, the mind kept waking
With anguish and affliction.
Malfinger, Ibid.
Why fhould we murmur to be circumfcrib'd,
As if it were a new thing to wear fetters?
When the whole world was meant but to confine us;
Wherein, who walks from one clime to another,
Hath but a greater freedom of the prison:
Our foul was the firft captive, born to inherit
But her own chains; nor can it be discharg'd,
Till nature tire with its own weight, and then
We are but more undone, to be at liberty.
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