Through mightiest space in fortune nature brings
Likes to join likes, and kiss, like native things.
That is, nature brings like qualities and dispositions to meet through any distance that fortune may have set between them; she joins them and makes them kiss like things born together.
The next lines I read with Hammer.
Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What ha'n't been, cannot be.
New attempts seen impossible to those who estimate their labour or enterprises by sense, and believe that nothing can be but what they see before them.
I.ii.32 (17,3)
[He had the wit, which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords, but they may jest,
Till their own scorn return to them; unnoted,
Ere they can hide their levity in honour]
I believe honour is not dignity of birth or rank, but acquired reputation: Your father, says the king, had the same airy flights of satirical wit-with the young lords of the present time, but they do not what he did, hide their unnoted levity in honour, cover petty faults with great merit.
This is an excellent observation. Jocose follies, and slight offences, are only allowed by mankind in him that overpowers them by great qualities.
I.ii.36 (18,4)