This threatens to fill hell, even though it was empty; Lord Grizzle, only to fill up the chinks, supposing the rest already full. ] [Footnote 2: Mr Addison is generally thought to have had this simile in his eye when he wrote that beautiful one at the end of the third act of his Cato.] _Hunc_. Oh, fatal rashness! should his fury slay My helpless bridegroom on his wedding-day, I, who this morn of two chose which to wed, May go again this night alone to bed. [1] So have I seen some wild unsettled fool, Who had her choice of this and that joint-stool, To give the preference to either loth, And fondly coveting to sit on both, While the two stools her sitting-part confound, Between 'em both fall squat upon the ground. [Footnote 1: This beautiful simile is founded on a proverb which does honour to the English language: Between two stools the breech falls to the ground. I am not so well pleased with any written remains of the ancients as with those little aphorisms which verbal tradition hath delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden hath chronicled one in heroick; Two ifs scarce make one possibility. --_Conquest of Granada_. My lord Bacon is of opinion that whatever is known of arts and sciences might be proved to have lurked in the Proverbs of Solomon. I am of the same opinion in relation to those above-mentioned; at least I am confident that a more perfect system of ethicks, as well as oeconomy, might be compiled out of them than is at present extant, either in the works of the ancient philosophers, or those more valuable, as more voluminous ones of the modern divines. ] ACT III. SCENE I.--KING ARTHUR'S _Palace_. [1] _Ghost (solus)_. Hail! ye black horrors of midnight's midnoon' Ye fairies, goblins, bats, and screech-owls, hail! And, oh! ye mortal watchmen, whose hoarse throats Th' immortal ghosts dread croakings counterfeit, All hail!--Ye dancing phantoms, who, by day, Are some condemn'd to fast, some feast in fire, Now play in churchyards, skipping o'er the graves, To the [2]loud music of the silent bell, All hail!