Let them call it mischief;
When it is past, and prosper’d, ’twill be virtue.
Ben Jonson.—Catiline, Act III. Scene 3. [Resolution is the name given to successful treason and rebellion. Riley’s Class. Dict. 348; hence the English Epigram—
Treason does never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, when it prospers none dare call it treason.
Sir Thos. Harrington.]
TREAT.—No, I’ll stand treat; for it would be a shame that, on my account, you both should take trouble for me, and by reason of that trouble you should pay the expense.
Riley’s Plautus.—The Bacchides, Act I. Scene 2. Page 158.
TREE.—The tree of deepest root is found
Least willing still to quit the ground;
’Twas therefore said, by
ancient sages,
So much, that in our later stages,
When pains grow
sharp, and sickness rages,
Mrs. Thrale (afterwards Mrs. Piozzi).—See Boswell’s Johnson. 1766. From a poem entitled “The Three Warnings.”
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees.
Pope.—Moral Essays, Epi. IV. To Burlington, Line 120.
If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.
Ecclesiastes, Chap. XI. Verse 3.
TREE.—That is meant as to the general state of the tree, not what is the effect of a sudden blast. The expression refers to condition, and not to position.
Boswell’s Johnson, 1782.