Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
John Selden (15841654)
W
—We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves. Nash a poet, poor enough (as poets us’d to be), seeing an alderman with his gold chain upon his great horse, by way of scorn, said to one of his companions, “Do you see yon fellow, how goodly, how big he looks? Why, that fellow cannot make a blank verse.”
—Nay, we measure the goodness of God from ourselves; we measure his goodness, his justice, his wisdom, by something we call just, good, or wise in ourselves; and in so doing, we judge proportionably to the country-fellow in the play, who said if he were a King, he would live like a lord, and have peas and bacon every day, and a whip that cried slash.