Two verses in Titus Andronicus appear to have pleased Shakspeare so well that he twice subsequently closely copied them :

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed,

She is a woman, therefore may be won.-Titus Andron. II. 1.

She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;

She is a woman, therefore to be won.-First Part Henry VI., V. 3.
Was ever woman in this humor wooed?

Was ever woman in this humor won?-Richard III., I. 2.

Though Shakspeare has drawn freely from others, he is himself a mine from which many builders have quarried their materials, a Coliseum

"from whose mass

Walls, palaces, half cities, have been reared."

Honor and shame from no condition rise:

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.-POPE: Essay on Man. This is only a new rendering of the thought thus expressed by Shakspeare:

From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,

The place is dignified by the doer's deed.—All's Well that Ends Well, II. 3.

Let rusty steel a while be sheathed,

And all those harsh and rugged sounds

Of bastinadoes, cuts, and wounds,

Exchanged to love's more gentle style.-Hudibras, P. II. c. 1.
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.-Richard III., I. 1.

The military figure of Shakspeare's musical lines,—

Beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks,

And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.-Romeo and Juliet, V. 3, is closely imitated by CHAMBERLAIN :—

The rose had lost

His ensign in her cheeks; and tho' it cost
Pains nigh to death, the lily had alone

Set his pale banners up.-Pharonidas.

A dream

Dreamed by a happy man, while the dark east

Is slowly brightening to his bridal morn.-TENNYSON.

Copied from the Merchant of Venice:

Then music is

As those dulcet sounds in break of day,

That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear

And summon him to marriage.-III. 2.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves?-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Max. 90.

Toute révélation d'un secret est la faute de celui qui l'a confié.-LA BRUYERE: De la Société.

I have played the fool, the gross fool, to believe

The bosom of a friend would hold a secret

Mine own could not contain.—MASSINGER: Unnatural Combat, V. 2.
Ham.-Do not believe it.

Ros.-Believe what?

Ham. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own.

SHAKSPEARE: Hamlet, IV. 2.

The following song from SHAKSPEARE'S Measure for Measure, commencing as follows, is copied verbatim in BEAUMONT and FLETCHER'S Bloody Brother :—

Take, O! take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.
But my kisses bring again,

Seals of love, but sealed in vain.

The following line occurs both in POPE'S Dunciad and ADDISON'S Campaign:

Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

BEN JONSON borrowed his celebrated ballad To Celia,-
Drink to me only with thine eyes, &c.,

from PHILOSTRATUS, a Greek poet, who flourished at the court of the Emperor Severus.

In MILTON'S description of the lazar-house occurs the following confused metaphor :

Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold?

Derived from a similar combination in TIBULLUS:

Flebis; non tua sunt duro præcordia ferro

Vincta, nec in tenero stat tibi corde silex.-El. I. 63.

When Christ, at Cana's feast, by power divine,
Inspired cold water with the warmth of wine,

See! cried they, while in redd'ning tide it gushed,

The bashful water saw its God and blushed.-AARON HILL.
Lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.*-RICHARD CRASHAWE.

Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store,

And he that cares for most shall find no more.-HALL.

His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:

This poor men get, and great men get no more.

G. WEBSTER: Vittoria Corombona.

God made the country, and man made the town.-CowPER: Task.
God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.-COWLEY.

Hypocrisy, detest her as we may,

May claim this merit still,-that she admits
The worth of what she mimics with such care,

And thus gives virtue indirect applause.-COWPER: Task.

Le vice rend hommage à la vertu en s'honorant de ses apparences.—

MASSILLON.

Love is sweet

Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever;

They who inspire it most are fortunate,

As I am now; but those who feel it most

Are happier still.-SHELLEY: Prometheus Unbound.

It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.—

It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned: it ought to make us prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love.-HAZLITT: Characteristics.

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.—

STERNE: Koran. Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.—La ROCHEFOUCAULD: Max. 285.

It is not a little singular that Mr. Arvine, in his excellent Cyclopædia, gives Milton and Dryden, while boys at school, equal credit for originating, in the same way, this beautiful idea.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend every way, and debases the stamp he bears. WYCHERLY: Plain Dealer.

Titles of honor are like the impressions on coin, which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.-STERNE: Koran.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money: they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current, and not at their real, value.-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Max. 160.

KOSSUTH'S "To him that wills, nothing is impossible,'

thus expressed by LA ROCHEFOUCAULD:—

Nothing is impossible: there are ways which lead to every thing; and if we had sufficient will, we should always have sufficient means.-Max. 255. SHELLEY gives the idea as follows:—

It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise: we might be all
We dream of, happy, high, majestical.
Where is the beauty, love, and truth we seek
But in our minds? and if we were not weak,
Should we be less in deed than in desire?

Julian and Maddolo.

To most men, experience is like the stern-lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.--Coleridge.

We arrive complete novices at the different ages of life, and we often want experience in spite of the number of our years.—

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Max. 430.

The same idea may be found in the Adelphi of TERENCE, Act V. Sc. 2, v. 1–4.

For those that fly may fight again,

Which he can never do that's slain.-Hudibras.

He who fights and runs away

May live to fight another day.-SIR JOHN MINNES.

Mirabeau's hasty temper is well known. "Monsieur le Compte," said his secretary to him one day, "the thing you require is impossible." "Impossible!" exclaimed Mirabeau, starting from his chair: "never again use that foolish word in my presence."

But DEMOSTHENES, the famous Grecian orator, had said, long before,

'Ανὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται.

She could love none but only such

As scorned and hated her as much.-Hudibras.

HORACE, in describing such a capricious kind of love, uses the following language:→

Leporem venator ut alta

In nive sectatur, positum sic tangere nolit;

Cantat et apponit: meus est amor huic similis; nam

Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.—Satires, Book I. ii., which is nearly a translation of the eleventh epigram of CALLIMACHUS.

What woful stuff this madrigal would be
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

POPE: Essay on Criticism.

MOLIERE has the same sentiment:

Tous les discours sont des sottises

Partant d'un homme sans éclat;

Ce seraient paroles exquises,

Si c'était un grand qui parlat.

It may also be found in ENNIUS, EURIPIDES, and other writers. The last notability who has expressed the idea is EMERSON, who says,

It adds a great deal to the force of an opinion to know that there is a man of mark and likelihood behind it.

Others may use the ocean as their road,

Only the English make it their abode :

We tread the billows with a steady foot.-WALLER.

CAMPBELL adopts the thoughts of these italicized words in the Mariners of England:

Britannia needs no bulwark,

No towers along the steep:
Her march is on the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.