Shakespeare takes up these various ideas of which the ship in storm and in calm is typical, and to some of them undoubtedly gives utterance from the lips of the dauntless Margaret of Anjou (3 Henry VI., act v. sc. 4, l. 1, vol. v. p. 325),—
“Great lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown overboard,
The cable broke, our holding-anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still: Is’t meet that he
Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad
With tearful eyes add water to the sea
And give more strength to that which hath too much;