Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
Figures pedantical--these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford's approach, and in her invention, and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.
To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
And so your follies fight against yourself.
Fear, and be slain--so worse can come to fight;
And fight and die is death destroying death,
Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.