Page:Merchant of Venice (1923) Yale.djvu/22

8 

Por. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is

aweary of this great world.

Ner. You would be, sweet madam, if your

miseries were in the same abundance as your

good fortunes are: and yet, for aught I see, they

are as sick that surfeit with too much as they

that starve with nothing. It is no mean happi-

ness therefore to be seated in the mean:

superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but

competency lives longer.

Por. Good sentences and well pronounced.

Ner. They would be better if well followed.

Por. If to do were as easy as to know what

were good to do, chapels had been churches, and

poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a

good divine that follows his own instructions: I

can easier teach twenty what were good to be

done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine

own teaching. The brain may devise laws for

the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold

decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to

skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple.

But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose

me a husband. O me, the word 'choose!' I may

neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom

I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter

curbed by the will of a dead father. Is it not

 8 seated mean: moderately endowed

9 comes by: brings on

11 sentences: sentiments 