To rise by others’ fall I deem a losing gain; All states with others’ ruin built, To ruin run amain. _Southwell._ Here are no false entrapping baits, To hasten too, too hasty fates; Unless it be The fond credulity Of silly fish, which, worldling like, still look Upon the bait, but never on the hook: Nor _envy_, unless among The birds, for prize of their sweet song. _Sir Walter Raleigh._ For every thing contains within itself The seeds and sources of its own corruption; The cankering rust corrodes the brightest steel; The moth frets out your garment, and the worm Eats its slow way into the solid oak: But _Envy_, of all evil things the worst, The same to-day, to-morrow, and for ever, Saps and consumes the heart in which it works. _Cumberland._ _Envy_’s a sharper spur than pay, And, unprovok’d,’t will court the fray. * * * * * Fools may our scorn, not _envy_, raise, For _envy_ is a kind of praise. * * * * * Canst thou discern another’s mind? What is’t you _envy_? _Envy_’s blind. Tell _Envy_, when she would annoy, That thousands want what you enjoy. _Gay._ The lion craved the fox’s art; The fox the lion’s force and heart; The cock implored the pigeon’s flight, Whose wings were rapid, strong, and light; The pigeon strength of wing despised, And the cock’s matchless valour prized. The fishes wish’d to graze the plain; The beasts to skim beneath the main. Thus, _envious_ of another’s state, Each blam’d the partial hand of fate. _Gay._ Slander’d in vain, enjoy the spleen of foes; Let these from _envy_ hate--from interest those! Guilt, like the first, your gratitude requires, Since none can _envy_ till he first admires; And nature tells the last his crime is none, Who to your interest but prefers his own. _Aaron Hill._ What made the man of _Envy_ what he was, Was worth in others, vileness in himself, A lust of praise, with undeserving deeds, And conscience poverty of soul; and still It was his earnest work and daily toil, With lying tongue, to make the noble seem Mean as himself. _Pollok._ ERROR. Who can understand his _errors_? cleanse thou me from secret faults.--Psalm xix. 12. For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter _error_ against the Lord.--Isaiah, xxxii. 6. Beware lest ye also, being led away with the _error_ of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.--II. Peter, iii. 17.