STATECRAFT.
A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
An hour may lay it in the dust.
Childe Harold, Canto II. LORD BYRON.
Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen:
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet show:
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.
Night. C. CHURCHILL.
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.
Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. II. J. DRYDEN.
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
In Memoriam, LXIII. A. TENNYSON.
And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet.
To the Queen. A. TENNYSON.
What should it be, that thus their faith can bind?
The power of Thought—the magic of the Mind!
Linked with success, assumed and kept with skill.
That moulds another's weakness to its will.
The Corsair. LORD BYRON.
'Tis thus the spirit of a single mind
Makes that of multitudes take one direction.
Don Juan. LORD BYRON.
For just experience tells, in every soil,
That those that think must govern those that toil.
The Traveller. O. GOLDSMITH.
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule.
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE.
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri[A] stand;
A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon.
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I. J. DRYDEN.
[Footnote A: George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.]
For close designs and crooked councils fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy-body to decay,
And o'er informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I. (Earl of Shaftesbury.)
J. DRYDEN.