O incredulity! the wit of fools

Great goddess, to whose throne in Cynthian fires, This earthly altar endless fumes expires; Therefore, in fumes of sighs and fires of grief, To fearful chances thou send'st bold relief, Happy, thrice happy type, and nurse of death, Who, …

For one heat, all know, doth drive out another, One passion doth expel another still.

Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit: not a simile he hath but is Homer's; not an invention, person, or disposition but is wholly or …

Let no man value at a little price A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words.

Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her Is righted even when men grant they err.

Music, and mood, she loves, but love she hates (As curious ladies do, their public cates), This train, with meteors, comets, lightenings, The dreadful presence of our empress sings: Which grant for ever (O eternal Night) Till virtue …