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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  Sir William Davenant 1605-1668 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Sir William Davenant 1605-1668 John Bartlett

 
1
    The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
          Gondibert, Book ii. Canto v. Stanza 37.
2
    Since knowledge is but sorrow’s spy,
It is not safe to know. 1
          The Just Italian. Act v. Sc. 1.
3
    For angling-rod he took a sturdy oake; 2
For line, a cable that in storm ne’er broke;
His hooke was such as heads the end of pole
To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole;
The hook was baited with a dragon’s tale,—
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.
          Britannia Triumphans. Page 15. 1637.
 
Note 1.
From ignorance our comfort flows.—Matthew Prior: To the Hon. Charles Montague.

Where ignorance is bliss,
’T is folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray: Eton College, Stanza 10. [back]
Note 2.
For angling rod he took a sturdy oak;
For line, a cable that in storm ne’er broke;
. . . . . .
His hook was baited with a dragon’s tail,—
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.
From The Mock Romance, a rhapsody attached to The Loves of Hero and Leander, published in London in the years 1653 and 1677. Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. i. p. 173. Samuel Daniel: Rural Sports, Supplement, p. 57.

His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
His line, a cable which in storms ne’er broke;
His hook he baited with a dragon’s tail,—
And sat upon a rock, and bobb’d for whale.
William King (1663–1712): Upon a Giant’s Angling. (In Chalmers’s “British Poets” ascribed to King.) [back]