I don't know--but I think _I_, even _I_ (an insect compared with this
creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's.
But, after all, a crown may be not worth dying for. Yet, to outlive
_Lodi_ for this!!!
Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! _Expende--quot
libras in duce summo invenies_? [3] I knew they were light in the
balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more
_carats_. [4] Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now
hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil:--the pen of the historian
won't rate it worth a ducat.
Psha! "something too much of this." [5] But I won't give him up even
now; though all his admirers have, "like the thanes, fallen from him."
[6]
[Footnote 1: In Otway's 'Venice Preserved' (act iv. sc. 2), Pierre says
to Jaffier, who had betrayed him:
"What whining monk art thou? What holy cheat?
That would'st encroach upon my credulous ears,
And cant'st thus vilely! Hence! I know thee not!"]
[Footnote 2:
"I see, men's judgements are a parcel of their fortunes."
'Antony and Cleopatra', act iii. sc. II, line 32.]
[Footnote 3:
"Expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo
Invenies?"
Juvenal, 'Sat'. x. 147.
"Produce the urn that Hannibal contains,
And weigh the mighty dust which yet remains:
'And is this all?'"
Gifford's 'Juvenal' (ed. 1802), vol. ii. pp. 338, 339.]
[Footnote 4:
"In the Statistical Account of Scotland, I find that Sir John Paterson
had the curiosity to collect, and weigh, the ashes of a person
discovered a few years since in the parish of Eccles.
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