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Fragment H. 1624. TWO COMPLEMENTARY COUPLETS in Smith's Generall Historie
  
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326

Fragment H. 1624.
TWO COMPLEMENTARY COUPLETS
in Smith's Generall Historie

[Source: Generall Historie, 45, 230.]

As has been mentioned in the Generall Historie, 9n, Smith "illustrated" that
work with a number of bits of more or less pertinent poetry, all of which,
with the exception of two rhyming couplets, were borrowed from Martin
Fotherby's Atheomastix. These two couplets are repeated here with some
slight additional comment.

Thus God unboundless by his power,
Made them thus kind, would us devour.

Smith's use of the word "unboundless" is cited in the OED as an
example of the occasional redundant addition of the prefix "un-" to a word
ending in "-less," which is found chiefly in the late sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.

A due desert, for fortune makes provision
For Knaves and Fooles, and men of base condition.

The editor has already observed elsewhere that "the incorporation of
the fool among fortune's unfavored runs contrary to proverb — fools do have
fortune" ("Captain John Smith and the Bishop of Sarum," Huntington
Library Quarterly
, XXVI [1962–1963], 25).