To Live A Life Half Dead, A

For Books Are Not Absolutely Dead Things, But Do Contain A Potency Of Life In Them To Be As Active As That Soul Was Whose Progeny They Are; Nay, They Do Preserve As In A Vial The Purest Efficacy And Extraction Of That Living Intellect That Bred Them.

His Spear, To Equal Which The Tallest Pine Hewn On Norwegian Hills To Be The Mast Of Some Great Ammiral Were But A Wand, He Walk'd With To Support Uneasy Steps Over The Burning Marle.

But What More Oft In Nations Grown Corrupt, And By Their Vices Brought To Servitude, Than To Love Bondage More Than Liberty, Bondage With Ease Than Strenuous Liberty.

So Little Knows Any, But God Alone, But Perverts Best Things To Worst Abuse, Or To Their Meanest Use.

That Virtue Therefore Which Is But A Youngling In The Contemplation Of Evil, And Knows Not The Utmost That Vice Promises To Her Followers, And Rejects It, Is But A Blank Virtue, Not A Pure; Her Whiteness Is But An Excremental Whiteness.