Alas, for the hour I entered in Your halls of lordly mirth; For I lost there, Jenny Allen, All that gives life worth; You taught your teacher, Jenny, The saddest lesson of earth.

The heart of fools, saith the wise man, is in the house of mirth; meaning, it seems, especially such hurtfully wanton mirth: for it is (as he further telleth us) the property of fools to delight in doing harm ("It is as sport to a fool to do mischief").

In 1812 Dr. John Ferriar published his Illustrations of Sterne, and the prefatory sonnet, in which he solicits pardon for his too minute investigations, is sufficient proof of the curiously reverent spirit in which he set about his damaging task: "Sterne, for whose sake I plod through miry ways Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear, Let not thy shade malignant censure fear, If aught of inward mirth my search betrays.

Thousands of angels were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all the blessed.

The hearts of men with selfe-consuming fyre, 275 Thenceforth seemes fowle, and full of sinfull blame And all that pompe to which proud minds aspyre By name of Honor, and so much desyre, Seemes to them basenesse, and all riches drosse, And all mirth sadnesse, and all lucre losse.

Were Peter Damian still upon earth, To be shocked by such ungodly mirth, He would write your names, with pen of gall, In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all!

His walk; mingling with knightly mirth and game; Solicitous but to avoid alone Aught that might make against him in her mind; Yet strong in this,that, let the world have end, He had pledged his own, and held Rhotruda's troth.