"To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires."
—Spenser.
[243:A] In the following passage Bacon shows us hope as a veritable life-preserver. "Hope, being the best of all the affections and passions, is very powerful to prolong life, if, like a nodding muse, it does not fall asleep and languish, but continually feeds the fancy: and therefore such as propose certain ends to be compassed, thriving and prospering therein according to their desire, are commonly long-lived; but having attained to their highest hopes, all their expectations and desires being satisfied, live not long afterwards."
[244:A] In Cotgrave's Dictionary defined as "store, plentie, abundance, great fulnesse, enough."
[245:A] "Babel's projectors, seeking a name, found confusion; and Icarus, by flying too high, melted his waxen wings and fell into the sea." "Grey cap for a green head." Gray express the idea very forcibly:
"Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then hurl the wretch from high,
To bitter scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning infamy!"
[246:A] "Life is like wine, he that would drink it pure must not drain it to the dregs."—Sir William Temple.
[246:B] Coleridge.
[249:A] Chaucer, The Marchaunt's Tale.
[249:B] "Men at some time are masters of their fates."—Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar.