Thomas Urquhart (Томас Эркарт)

Epigrams. The First Booke. № 38. How Fortune oftentimes most praeposterously pond'ring the aections of men, with a great deale of injustice bestoweth her favours

FOrtune with wealth, and honour at her feet:
And holding in her hand a ballance, sits
Weighing human desert, as she thinks fit:
One of the scales whereof the learn'dest wits,
Most vertuous, and of choisest parts containes:
The other being appointed for such, as
Are vicious, light, and destitute of Braines.
The light are mounted up into the place,
Where riches, and preferment lye exposed
To those, can reach them: while the other scale,
By th'only weight of worth, therein inclosed
Is more submissively deprest, then all
That hangs on Fortunes ballance: and the higher,
That hair-brain'd heads b'advanc'd above the states
Of others in this world: so much the higher
To want, and bondage are the wiser pates;
Of such things then, as to the disposition
Of Fortune doe pertaine, let no man wonder,
While the most wicked gaine the acquisition,
That by their meanes, the good be brought at under;
For wheresoever vice is most respected:
The greatest vertues are the more rejected.

1. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 22. A very ready way to goodnesse, and true VVisedome
2. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 43. That inconveniences ought to be regarded to before hand
3. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 24. No man should glory too much in the flourishing verdure of his Youth
4. Epigrams. The Second Booke. № 4. How abject a thing it is, for a man to have bin long in the world without giving any proofe either by vertue, or learning, that he hath beene at all
5. Epigrams. The First Booke. № 42. The speech of a noble spirit to his adversary, whom af∣ter he had defeated, he acknowledgeth to be nothing in∣feriour to himselfe in worth, wit, or valour, thereby insinuating that a wise man cannot properly bee subdued: though he be orthrown in body, and worldly commodities

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