Note 185 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 4)
Reading edition
Storer, in his Poetical Life of Wolsey, 1599, has availed himself of this declaration of the cardinal, in a passage justly celebrated for its eminent beauty. The image in the second stanza is worthy of a cotemporary of Shakspeare:
I did not mean with predecessors pride, To walk on cloth as custom did require; More fit that cloth were hung on either side In mourning wise, or make the poor attire; More fit the dirige of a mournful quire In dull sad notes all sorrows to exceed, For him in whom the prince’s love is dead. I am the tombe where that affection lies, That was the closet where it living kept; Yet wise men say, Affection never dies;— No, but it turns; and when it long hath slept, Looks heavy, like the eye that long hath wept. O could it die, that were a restfull state; But living, it converts to deadly hate.