[30]

From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer's deed:
Where great additions swell's, and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour: good alone
Is good without a name; vileness is so:
The property by what it is should go,
Not by the title; ... that is honour's scorn,
Which challenges itself as honour's born,
And is not like the sire: honours thrive
When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave,
Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave
A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb
Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb
Of honour'd bones indeed.
(All's Well, II., iii., 130 seq.)

[31]

For men have marble, women waxen minds,
And therefore are they formed as marble will;
The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill.
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
(Lucrece, 1240-6.)

How easy it is for the proper-false
In women's waxen hearts, to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we;
For, such as we are made of, such we be.
(Twelfth Night, II., ii., 31.)

[32] This paper was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, May 1901.

[33] The pun on "cant" and "recant" was not original, though Lord John's application of it was. Its inventor seems to have been Lady Townshend, the brilliant mother of Charles Townshend, the elder Pitt's Chancellor of the Exchequer. When she was asked if George Whitefield, the evangelical preacher, had yet recanted, she replied: "No, he has only been canting."

[34] In passing cursorily over the whole field I must ask pardon for dwelling occasionally on ground that is in detached detail sufficiently well trodden, as well as for neglecting some points which require more thorough exploration than is practicable within my present limits.

[35] On this point the Shakespearean oracle always speaks with a decisive and practical note:—

Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
(Hamlet, I., iii., 65-7.)