Oh Venvs staie? since once the price was thine,
Thou ought’st not still, at Pallas thus repine.”
Note, now, how the thoughts of the Emblematists, though greatly excelled in the language which clothes them, are matched by the avowals which the severe and grave Angelo made to himself in Measure for Measure (act ii. sc. 4, l. 1, vol. i. p. 327). He had been disposed to carry out against another the full severity of the law, which he now felt himself inclined to infringe, but confesses,—
“When I would pray and think, I think and pray
To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words:
Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth,
As if I did but only chew his name;
And in my heart the strong and swelling evil
Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied,