"This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to
death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of
Maecenas, recorded in the 101st epistle of Seneca:--

"_Debilem facito manu,_
_Debilem pede, coxa_" &c.--Warburton's note.

I cannot but think this rather a heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. It
appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when even
that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own immortality,
still to seek to be,--to be a mind, a will.

As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate
advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot
exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of
immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable
than the spendthrift;--only that the miser's present feelings are as much
of the present as the spendthrift's. But _caeteris paribus_, that is, upon
the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one coexists
equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the present is less a
selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the moment with no
inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is supposed in the
latter case; whatever can elevate him, in the former. And as to
self;--strange and generous self! that can only be such a self by a
complete divestment of all that men call self,--of all that can make it
either practically to others, or consciously to the individual himself,
different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a perpetual
religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis and ground
of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love myself, as far
as it is of God?

_Ib._ sc. 2.--

"Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go."

Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,--

"Grace to stand, virtue to go."

"Cymbeline."

Act i. sc. 1.--

"You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers'
Still seem, as does the king's."

There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of "courtiers" and
"king," as to the sense;--only it is not impossible that Shakespeare's
dramatic language may allow of the word "brows" or "faces" being
understood after the word "courtiers'," which might then remain in the
genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent sense, and
is