PEACE-PEASANT, PEASANTRY.

441

PEACE-continued.

Men are unhappy when they know not how
To value peace, without its loss;
And from the want learn how to use

What they could so ill manage when enjoy'd.

Sir R. Howard, Blind Lady.

Would you taste the tranquil scene?
Be sure your bosoms be serene:
Devoid of hate, devoid of strife,
Devoid of all that poisons life;
And much it 'vails you, in their place,
To graft the love of human race.

Brave minds, howe'er at war, are secret friends,
Their generous discord with the battle ends;
In peace they wonder whence dissension rose,
And ask how souls so like could e'er be foes.

Mark! where his carnage and his conquest cease!

Shenstone.

Tickell.

He makes a solitude, and calls it peace. Byron, Br.of Ab. 11.20.

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the world bestow'd on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals and forts! Longfellow, Poems.

The hand of peace is frank and warm,

And soft as ringdove's wing,

And he who quells an angry thought
Is greater than a king.

PEARL.

A pearl may in a toad's head dwell,
And may be found too in an oyster shell.

Eliza Cook.

Bunyan, Apology for his Book.

PEASANT, PEASANTRY-see Country Life.
Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made :
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

Ib. Traveller.

Goldsmith, Deserted Village, 51. Cheerful, at morn, he wakes from short repose, Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes. At night returning, ev'ry labour sped, He sits him down the monarch of a shed.

Ib. Traveller.

Pedantry is but a corn, or wart,

Bred in the skin of judgment, sense, and art;
A stupefied excrescence, like a wen,

Fed by the peccant humours of learn'd men,
That never grows from natural defects
Of downright and untutor'd intellects,
But from the over-curious and vain
Distempers of an artificial brain.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always listening to himself appears.
Pursuit of fame with pedants fills our schools,
And into coxcombs burnishes our fools.

Brimful of learning, see that pedant stride,

Butler, Sat. II.

Pope, E. C. 612.

Bristling with horrid Greek, and puff'd with pride!
A thousand authors he in vain has read,

And with their maxims stuff'd his empty head;

And thinks that without Aristotle's rule,

Reason is blind, and common sense a fool!

Young.

Boileau.

PEDIGREE-see Ancestry, Authenticity, Birth, Descent, Honour.

The sap which at the root is bred

In trees, though all the boughs is spread;

But virtues which in parents shine,

Make not like progress through the line. Waller, to Zelinda, 13.

Nobler is a limited command

Given by the love of all your native land,
Than a successive title, long and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark.

Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1. 298.

He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet,
By heraldry proved valiant or discreet!

Young.

What boots it on the lineal tree to trace,

Through many a branch, the founders of our race-
Time-honoured chiefs-if, in their right, we give
A loose to vice, and like low villains live?

Gifford.

PEN-see Authors, Critics, Writing.

I want curses for those mighty shoals
Of scribbling Chloris's, and Phyllis' fools;
Those oafs should be restrain'd during their lives
From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives.

Dryden, Epilogue to Troilus and Cressida.

PEN-continued.

PEN-PENITENCE.

The unhappy man who once has trail'd a pen,
Lives not to please himself, but other men;
Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood.
Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.

443

Dryden, Prol. to Lee's Cæsar Borgia.

No other use of paper thou should'st make
Than carrying loads and reams upon thy back:
Carry vast burdens till thy shoulders shrink,
But curst be he that gives thee pen and ink:
Such dangerous weapons should be kept from fools,
As nurses from their children keep edged tools.

Dorset, to Ed. Howard on his Plays.

Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink,
So may he cease to write, and learn to think.

Prior, to a Person who wrote ill.

Oh! Nature's noblest gift-my grey goose quill:
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,

That mighty instrument of little men!

Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 6.

In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plunder'd,
Perhaps of goose, but now and then,
From Jove's own eagle sunder'd.
But now, metallic pens

disclose

Alone the poet's numbers;
In iron inspiration glows,

Or with the poet slumbers.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

John Quincy Adams.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Ld. Lytton, Richelieu, 11.2.

PENITENCE-see Repentance.

Death is deferred, and penitence has room
To mitigate, if not reverse the doom.

He hung his head-each nobler aim,
And hope, and feeling, which had slept
From boyhood's hour, that instant came
Fresh o'er him, and he wept-he wept !
Blest tears of soul-felt penitence!
In whose benign, redeeming flow
Is felt the first, the only sense

Of guiltless joy that guilt may know.

Dryden.

Thos. Moore.

444

PENTAMETER-PERFECTION.

PENTAMETER - -see Hexameter.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Coleridge, The Ovidian Elegiac Metre.

PEOPLE-see Mob, Popularity, Public Voice, Rabble,

And what the people but a herd confus'd,

A miscellaneous rabble, who extol

Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise?
They praise, and they admire, they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extoll'd,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk,
Of whom to be disprais'd were no small praise?

Milton. P. R. II. 49.

The people sweat not for their king's delight,
T' enrich a pimp, or raise a parasite;
Theirs is the toil; and he who well has served
His country, has his country's wealth deserved.

Byron, D. J. VIII. 50.

Dryden, Sigismonda and Guiscardo. 583. "God save the king!" and kings, For if he don't, I doubt if men will longer;I think I hear a little bird, who sings The people by and bye will be the stronger: The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings So much into the raw as quite to wrong her Beyond the rules of posting,-and the mob At last fall sick of imitating Job. PERFECTION-see Excess, Man, Supererogation. All, that life can rate, Worth name of life, in thee hath estimate; Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all That happiness and pride can happy call. Compare her face with some that I shall show, And it will make thee think thy swan a crow. Sh. Rom. 1. 2. One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun

Sh. All's W. ii. 1.

Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun. Sh. Rom. 1. 2.
There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw,
A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw.

Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, Essay on Poetry.
To those who know thee not, no words can paint!
And those who know thee, know all words are faint!
Hannah More, Sensibility.

Nature, in her productions slow, aspires,
By just degrees to reach perfection's height.

Somervile, Chase, 1.

Unto the savage love of enterprise,

Byron.

That they will seek for peril as a pleasure. PERJURY.

pence,

And hast thou sworn on every slight pretence,
Till perjuries are common as bad
While thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look within ?
PERSECUTION.

Ripe persecution, like the plant

Whose nascence Mocha boasted,

Sh. Rom. 11. 2.

Cowper, Expostulation, 386.

Some bitter fruit produced, whose worth
Was never known till roasted.

PERSEVERANCE-see Diligence, Industry.

Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright. To have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.

By time and counsel, do the best we can,

Cotton.

Sh. Troil. III. 3.

Th' event is never in the power of man. Herrick, Aph. 304. Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;

Nothing's so hard, but search will find it out. Ib. Aph. 247.

In war or peace, who his great purpose yields,

He is the only villain of this world:

But he who labours firm and gains his point,
Be what it will, which crowns him with success,
He is the son of fortune and of fame;
By those admir'd, those specious villains most,
That else had bellow'd out reproach against him.

Thomson, Agamemnon.

The man who consecrates his hours

By vig'rous effort, and an honest aim,

At once he draws the sting of life and death;

He walks with nature; and her paths are peace. Young, N.T. 2.

The dropping shower

Scoops the rough rock. The plough's attemper'd share

Decays; and the thick pressure of the crowd

Incessant passing, wears the stone-pav'd street.

Lucretius, (Good) 1. 314.