The Winter with his grisly storms no longer dare abide,
  The pleasant grass with lusty green the earth hath newly dyed,
  The trees hath leaves, the boughs do spread, new changed is the year,
  The water brooks are clean sunk down, the pleasant boughs appear,
  The Spring is come, the goodly nymphs now dance in every place: 
  Thus hath the year most pleasantly so lately chang’d her face.

EARL OF SURREY.

* * * * *

THE SOUL.

  —­To show her powerful deity,
  Her sweet Endymion more to beautify,
  Into his soul the goddess doth infuse
  The fiery nature of a heavenly muse;
  Which the spirit labouring by the mind,
  Partaketh of celestial things by kind: 
  For why the soul being divine alone,
  Exempt from gross and vile corruption,
  Of heavenly secrets incomprehensible,
  Of which the dull flesh is not sensible,
  And by one only powerful faculty,
  Yet governeth a multiplicity,
  Being essential uniform in all
  Not to be severed or dividual;
  But in her function holdeth her estate
  By powers divine in her ingenerate;
  And so by inspiration conceiveth,
  What heaven to her by divination breatheth.

DRAYTON.

* * * * *

UNDERSTANDING.

  Most miserable creature under sky
  Man without understanding doth appear,
  For all this world’s affliction he thereby,
  And Fortune’s freaks is wisely taught to bear;
  Of wretched life the only joy is she,
  And the only comfort in calamity;
  She arms the breast with constant patience,
  Against the bitter throes of Dolour’s darts,
  She solaceth with rules of sapience,
  The gentle winds in midst of worldly smarts: 
  When he is sad, she seeks to make him merry,
  And doth refresh his spirits when they be weary.

SPENSER.

* * * * *

CARE.

  Care, the consuming canker of the mind,
  The discord that disorders sweet heart’s tune,
  The abortive bastard of a coward mind,
  The lightfoot lackey that runs post by death,
  Bearing the letters which contain our end;
  The busy advocate that sells his breath
  Denouncing worst to him who’s most his friend.

CONSTABLE.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

OLD PARR AND OLD PEOPLE.

(From “After Dinner Chat,” in the New Monthly Magazine.)