“Which if you do open, to cheapen and copen,
You will be unwilling, for many a shilling,
To part with the profit that you shall have of it;”
and the drama, which, whether considered as a school of eloquence or a popular entertainment, is entitled to national regard, would have been proscribed, because—having neither soul for sentiment, eye for beauty, nor ear for poetry, it was his pleasure to be displeased. His humanity may be summed up in one short sentence, “I will take care, my dear brother, you shall not keep your bed in sickness, for I will take it from under you.” There are two reasons why we don't trust a man—one, because we don't know him, and the other because we do. Such a man would have shouted “Hosan-nah!” when the Saviour entered Jerusalem in triumph; and cried “Crucify him!” when he went up the mountain to die.
Seeing how little party spirit, religious controversy, and money-grubbing have contributed to the general stock of human happiness—that pre-eminence in knowledge is
“Only to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults, and feel our own,”
we cry, with St. Patrick's dean, “Vive la bagatelle!” Democritus lived to an hundred. Death shook, not his dart, but his sides, at the laughing philosopher, and “delay'd to strike” till his lungs had crowed their second jubilee: while Heraclitus was Charon's passenger at threescore. But the night wanes apace; to-morrow we must rise with the lark. Fill we a cup to Mercury, à bon repos!
A bumper at parting! a bumper so bright,
Though the clock points to morning, by way of good