Massinger.—The Old Law.
The abstract of all villainy.
Cotton.—A Rogue, last line but three.
VINEYARD.—A vineyard is beautifully laden with ripe clusters: which a little boy is watching, as he sits at the hedgerows: and around him two foxes; one is roaming up and down the rows, spoiling the ripe grapes.
Banks’s Theocritus.—Idyll I. Page 3.
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes.
Canticles, Chap. II. Verse 15; quoted by Mr. Banks.
VIOLETS.—Ye violets that first appeare,
Like the proud virgins of the
yeare,
Sir Henry Wotton.—“You Meaner Beauties,” 2 Percy Relics, 334.
VIRTUE.—The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.
Shakespeare.—All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 3. (First Lord.)
VIRTUE.—Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office,
that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off:
And
pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers
of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
Shakespeare.—Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7. (Macbeth contemplating the effect of his Assassination of Duncan.)
A virtue that was never seen in you.
Shakespeare.—King Henry IV. Part I. Act III. Scene 1. (Glendower to Hotspur.)
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. (To his Mother.)
The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,
Is virtue’s prize.
Pope.—Essay on Man, Epi. IV. Line 168.
O let us still the secret joy partake,
To follow virtue even for virtue’s sake.
Pope.—Temple of Fame, Line 364.
Well may your heart believe the truths I tell;
’Tis virtue makes the bliss, where’er we dwell.
Collins.—Eclogue I. Line 5. Selim.
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour,
Content to dwell in decencies for ever.
Pope.—Moral Essays, Epi. II. Line 163.