Ask You What Provocation I Have Had?

In A Sadly Pleasing Strain, Let The Warbling Lute Complain.

There Various News I Heard Of Love And Strife,of Peace And War, Health, Sickness, Death, And Life,of Loss And Gain, Of Famine And Of Store,of Storms At Sea, And Travels On The Shore,of Prodigies, And Portents Seen In Air,of Fires And Plagues, And Stars With Blazing Hair,of Turns Of Fortune, Changes In The State,the Fall Of Favourites, Projects Of The Great,of Aid Mismanagements, Taxations New:all Neither Wholly False, Nor Wholly True.

Get Your Enemy To Read Your Works In Order To Mend Them, For Your Friend Is So Much Your Second Self That He Will Judge Too Like You.

To Buy Books As Some Do Who Make No Use Of Them, Only Because They Were Published By An Eminent Printer, Is Much As If A Man Should Buy Clothes That Did Not Fit Him, Only Because They Were Made By Some Famous Tailor.

Count All Th' Advantage Prosperous Vice Attains, 'tis But What Virtue Flies From And Disdains: And Grant The Bad What Happiness They Would, One They Must Want--which Is, To Pass For Good.