ment too soon, lest you should have reason to
retract your commendation." Staunton quotes from "The Paradise of Dainty
Devises," 1596:

"A good beginning oft we see, but seldome standing at one stay.
For few do like the meane degree, then praise at parting some men say."

"Pray God, my girdle break"[887] ("1 Henry IV.," iii. 3).

[887] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 393.

"Put your finger in the fire and say it was your fortune." An excellent
illustration of this proverb is given by Edmund in "King Lear" (i. 2):
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in
fortune, we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the
stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools, by heavenly
compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance;
drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary
influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an
admirable evasion," etc.

"Respice finem, respice furem." It has been suggested that Shakespeare
("Comedy of Errors," iv. 4) may have met with these words in a popular
pamphlet of his time, by George Buchanan, entitled "Chamaeleon Redivivus;
or, Nathaniel's Character Reversed"--a satire against the Laird of
Lidingstone, 1570, which concludes with the following words, "Respice
finem, respice furem."

"Seldom comes the better." In "Richard III." (ii. 3), one of the
citizens says:

"Ill news, by'r lady; seldom comes the better:
I fear, I fear, 'twill prove a troublous world"

--a proverbial saying of great antiquity. Mr. Douce[888] cites an account
of its origin from a MS. collection of stories in Latin, compiled about
the time of Henry III.

[888] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 333.

"Service is no inheritance." So, in "All's Well that Ends Well" (i. 3),
the Clown says: "Service is no heritage."

"Sit thee down, sorrow" ("Love's Labour's Lost," i. 1).

"Sit at the stern." A proverbial phrase meaning to have the management
of public affairs. So, in "1 Henry VI." (i. 1), Winchester says:

"The king from Eltham I intend to steal,
And sit at chiefest stern of public weal."

"She has the mends in her own hands." This proverbial phrase is of
frequent occurrence in our old writers, and probably signifies, "It is
her own fault;" or, "The remedy lies with herself." It is used by
Pandarus in "Troilus and Cressida" (i. 1). Burton, in his "