Thou Shalt not Steal." PROPKRTY OF Purchased •I bovrow'd by a If thou art Right welcome sliali lie be, To read — to study — not to loud. But to return to ine. Not that imparted kuowl«dge doth Diminish learning's store ; But books, I find, if often lent, Return to me no move. lload slowly, pause frequently,^ think seriously, return illv. wifh llir (•:,irii.>r-; ,,f fhi- l,.-)v.w m,,i mi>-.,,.,1 ,i.>wii THE ESSAYS OF ABRAHAM COWLEY. MS^ "Cowley's Prose stamps him as a man of genius and an improver of the English Language." Thomas Campbell. THE ESSAYS OF CA BRA HAM COWLEY. WITH LIFE BY THE EDITOR. NOTES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY UR. HURD, AND OTHERS. ScconU ffiHUton. NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD, AND CO. 1869. CHISWICK press: — PRINTED BY WHITTINOHAM AND WILKINS , TUOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. CONTENTS. Page Essay, Ixtroductory A^•D Biographical . . . . vii Essay I. Of Liberty 1 II. Of Solitude ... 24 III. Of Obscurity 32 IV. Of Agriculture ... . ... 33 V. The Garden 65 VI. Of Greatness , . . 76 VII. Of Avarice SS VIII. The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company . 97 IX. The Shortness of Life, and Uncertainty of Riches . 106 X. The Danger of Procrastination 112 XI. Of Myself 118 XII. A Discourse, by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell 130 The ^Author's Preface to Cutter of Coleman Street . . .177 A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy . 185 2045755 ESSAY, INTRODUCTORY AXD BIOGRAPHICAL. |HEX Abraham Cowley was buried in "West- minster Abbey, near Chaucer and Spenser, King Charles II. pronounced oracularly, " That Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England." The posthumous praise of princes is, we must remember, one way of paying their debts ; and as Cowley had acted as secretary to either Charles, and had been so trusted that he wrote much of their correspondence in cypher, and was rewarded slenderly, if at all, we may believe that with the king such excessive praise was natural. This was in 1667 ; and Cowley had died at the Porch House in Chertsey, in the forty-ninth year of his age, leaving behind him, as we know, both better men and better poets. It is in writing his life that Doctor Johnson com- plains of the penury of English biography, and does, one must confess, very little to enrich it. He tells us that " Cowley's father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals under the general appellation of a b viii ESSAY, INTRODUCTORY citizen :" from the omission of his name in St. Duustan's register, it was supposed that this citizen father was a sectary. Whatever he was, he died before his celebrated son was born ; and it is to his mother, who lived to a great age, and rejoiced in her son's fame, that Cowley owed his education and position. In that mother's window lay a volume of Spenser, and reading this he became " irrecoverably a poet," as he himself relates. He was admitted into Westminster School, hated gram- mar, so that he never mastered or retained its ordinary rules ; wrote " The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe," when he was ten years old, and another poem when he was twelve. While yet at school he produced a comedy, " Love's Riddle," but these " learned puer- ilities," says the Doctor, " added little to the wonders of Cowley's minority." In 1636, Cowley went to Cambridge, wrote part of the " Davideis," and a Latin play, the " Naufragium Jocu- lare ;" and, as Prince Charles, at the beginning of the Civil War, passed through Cambridge on his way to York, he was entertained by the comedy of the " Guardian," "rough-drawn" by Cowley, and repeated by the stu- dents. The attention or even the attendance of the prince was enough to make the young poet a royalist, and in 1643, he, being then a Master of Arts, was, by the prevalence of the Parliament, ejected from Cam- bridge, and soon after followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to Lord Jermyn, and was employed " in cyphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the king and queen, an employment of AXD BIOGRAPHICAL. ix the highest confidence and honour. So wide was his province of intelligence," adds his biographer, " that it filled all his days, and two or three nights in the week." Hard as he worked, and useful as he was, he seems to have been merely used just so long as he was useful, and during the whole of that time to have longed for leisure and retirement. In 1656 he was sent to Eng- land under pretence of seeking this retirement, but in reality to be useful as a spy. Being seized instead of another man, he was not released until he found security of £1000, a heavy sum in those days, which he could not pay, and which was found for him by Dr. Scarborough. In the same year he published his poems, declaring in the preface, " that his desire had been for some time past, and did even now vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American plantations, and to for- sake this world for ever." This desire, of which Johnson speaks far too severely, saying, " If his activity was virtue, his retreat was cowardice," was natural enough. His essays will tell us how he loved retirement ; he was sick of courts and courtly ingratitude ; and when he returned to his own country, had stepped into a prison. He was obliged to obtain an order to be created doctor of physic, and to practise to gain a subsistence, and thereby irritated some of his friends. He went into France again, "having," says Johnson quaintly, "made a copy of verses on Oliver's death." The truth seems to be that Cowley really did admire Cromwell. His bond of security was never cancelled, and in France, perhaps, he acted coldly X ESSAY, INTRODUCTORY to the king's party, though he remained there till the general delivery at the Restoration. He had been made a Doctor of Physic at Oxford in 1657, and at the com- mencement of the Royal Society he appears busy among the experimental philosophers with the title of Dr. Cowley. He fitted himself for practice by an extensive study of botany, and with questionable taste tried to display the qualities of herbs in elegiac verse, and the uses of trees in heroic numbers. At the Restoration, Cowley raised a song of triumph. He had been promised by both Charles I. and II. the Mastership of the Savoy ; but kings' words were then worth little, and Anthony Wood tells us, " he lost it by certain persons, enemies to the muses." He fitted up his old comedy, the Guardian, as a new piece, " Cutter of Coleman Street."^ This was considered as a satire on the Royalists, and condemned. Dryden went with Sprat to the first night, and told Dennis the critic that when Cowley was told of his ill-success, " he received the news not with so much firmness as might have been expected of so great a man." No wonder ; ingratitude and neglect do not render every susceptible poet stronger. He tells us in his de- fence, " that having followed the royal family through all their distresses, it was not then likely at the Restoration ' Dr. Johnson calls it The Cutter of Coleman Street, but the play is without the article. " A merry sharking fellow," one, Cutter, is the chief person in the comedy which brought him into trouble ; hence the vindication which we print amongst his prose works. — Ed. AXD BIOGBAPHICAL. x that he should begin a (juarrel with them." They quar- relled with him, and he felt it, that much is certain ; he wrote a poem called the " Complaint," wherein he calls himself the melancholy Cowley, and this, with the UHual fortune of complaints, seems to have excited more con- tempt than pity. Certain loyalist poets twitted hira with this in doggerel verse, which shows plainly enough the suspicion whereon Cowley's misfortunes are to be laid. The verses are on the choice of a Laureate : — Savoij-missing Cowley came iuto the courtj Making apologies for his bad play ; Every one gave him so good a report, That Apollo gave heed to all he could say : Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke, Unless he had done some notable folly ; With verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,^ Or printed his pitiful melancholy. Authors generally receive their worst wounds from those of their own craft ; and Cowley, no doubt, felt these bitterly. Xo wonder, then, that, as Johnson sneeringly says, and throughout the Dr. has a strong bias against the poet, " his vehement desire of retire- ment now came again upon him." Johnson even finds fault with Anthony "Wood (calling him the morose Wood) for the mild reproval expressed in this true sen- tence, " Not finding that preferment conferred upon him ^ Sir Samuel Tuke was the original whence Butler caricatured Hudibras; but here one is tempted to think that the name stands for " Noll Cromwell." xii ESSAF, INTRODUCTORY which he expected,'^ while others for their money carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey." It is well to chronicle that, by the interest of two noblemen, the poor poet, nearly, we may infer, reduced to beggary, obtained a lease of the queen's lands, which afforded him an income ; and first at Barn elms, and afterwards at Chertsey, he wrought amongst his farm- men. "Here," asks Johnson, "was he contented?" Well, not quite so, nor was it likely. " I can get no money," wrote Cowley to Dr. Sprat, " from my tenants, and my meadows are eaten up every night by cattle, put in by my neighbours. What this signifies or may come to in time God knows ; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing else than hanging.''' As the crime could hardly lead to the hanging of others, we must sadly infer here that Cowley hints at suicide — a sad enough result of neglect, even if only jocosely foreshadowed. But he did not long suffer from these perturbations ; for, having overheated himself by labouring amongst his workmen, " he was taken," says his first gentle biographer, " with a defluxion and a stoppage in his throat, which at first he neglected, but which in a fortnight proved fatal to him. Long kept in perturbation, worn out by disappoint- ment : — " On long hopes, the court's thin diet, fed." Cowley died at the Porch House, Chertsey, in the ' And which he had earned, and was most ungratefully denied to him. — Ed. AXD BIOGRAPHICAL. xiii forty-ninth year of his age, and his last request to his literary executor was to excise from his works any word or expression that might seem to give " the least oifence to religion or to good manners." When he died all England awoke to his worth ; he was buried as we have related ; the king pronounced his pretty eulogium, paying back long services with a short sentence ; and the Duke of Buckingham was at the expense of his tomb. Of his poetry we will here say little ; the fashion of it has quite gone by ; and Johnson has an acute sentence which suggests the i^eason. " If," he writes, " the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry TiyiT) jiiifjiriTii'Ct), an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their name of poets ; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything ; they neither copied nature nor life ; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect." So it was that, even in Pope's time, Cowley had ceased to be read as a poet. Who now reads Cowley ? If he pleases yet. His moral pleases, not his pointed wit : Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art. But still I love the language of his heart. His "poetry" is full of gross conceits almost as exag- gerated as those in our modern burlesque rhyme ; thus, of the stone with which Cain slew his brother, he writes : — I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant, At once his murther and his monument. xiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. And of the sword taken from Goliath, he says : — A sword so great, that it was only fit To cut off his great head that came with it But we need not linger over these. Cowley was a fair scholar, a ripe, thoughtful man ; and the faults of his Muse arose from the fashion of the times. He was, in fact, not strong enough as a poet to lift himself beyond them. His prose is a far different thing,— clear, manly, ten- der, and nervous. "No author," says Dr. Johnson, " ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth placid equability which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far sought, or hard laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness." As a poet his greatest praise is that he could now and then write the heroic couplet so well, that Milton read him and condescended to imitate him ; as a prose writer, he stands as one of the earliest, purest, and most manly of our essayists ; who has offered to the thoughtful reader of this, as well as of his own age, pages of con- solation, learned amusement, and philosophic advice, which the world will not willingly let die. ^ COWLEY'S ESSAYS. OF LIBERTY. HE liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made them- selves, under whatsoever form it be of go- vernment : ' the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God, and of his countrey. Of this latter, only, we are here to discourse, and to enquire ' Cowley, although a royalist, has almost a wider notion of liberty than Milton the Republican, also a Cambridge scholar, at least if we judge from the fragment of Euripides which Milton translated and printed as embodying his own opinion : — This is true liberty, when free-born men, Having to advise the public, may speak free ; Which he who can and will desex-ves high praise. In free speech and its results is Milton's conception of political liberty ; in living under laws which men have made themselves, Cowley's. The author wrote this essay in retirement, after suffering the ingratitude of Charles II. and being refused the Mastership of the Savoy. 2 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. what estate of life does best seat us in the possession of it. This liberty of our own actions is such a funda- mental privilege of, human nature, that God himself, notwithstanding all his infinite power and right over us, permits us to enjoy it, and that too after a forfeiture made by the rebellion of Adam. He takes so much care for the intire preservation of it to us, that he suffers neither his providence nor eternal decree to break or infringe it. Now for our time, the same God, to whom we are but tenants-at-will for the whole, requires but the seventh part to be paid to him as a small quit-rent in acknowledgement of his title. It is man only that has the impudence to demand our whole time," though he neither gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable value for the least part of it. This birth-right of mankind above all other creatures, some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread and broth : but the greatest part of men make such a bar- gain for the delivery- up of themselves, as Thamar did for Judah ; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and bracelets. The great dealers in this world may be di- vided into the ambitious, the covetous, and the volup- tuous ; and that all these men sell themselves to be slaves, though to the vulgar it may seem a Stoical para- dox, will appear to the wise so plain and obvious, that they will scarce think it deserves the labour of argu- mentation. Let us first consider the ambitious ; and those, both in their progress to greatness, and after the attaining ^ Co-wley had spent not only days, but days and nights too, in cyphering and decyphering the secret correspondence to and from Charles and his Queen and adherents j with what reward for hard work and fidelity, we know. OF LIBERTY. 3 of it. There is nothing truer than what Sallust says, " Dominationis in alios servitium suum mercedem dant : " they are content to pay so great a price as their own servitude, to purchase the domination over others. The first thing they must resolve to sacrifice is their whole time ; they must never stop, nor ever turn aside whilst they are in the race of glory, no not like Atalanta for golden apples. Neither, indeed, can a man stop himself if he would, when he is in this career : Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas.'* Pray, let us but consider a little, what mean servile things men do for this imaginary food. We cannot fetch a greater example of it, than from the chief men of that nation which boasted most of liberty. To what pitiful baseness did the noblest Romans submit them- selves, for the obtaining a prcetorship, or the consular dignity ! They put on the habit of suppliants, and ran about on foot, and in dirt, through all the tribes, to beg voices ; they flattered the poorest artisans ; and carried a nomenclator with them, to whisper in their ear every man's name, lest they should mistake it in their salu- tations ; they shook the hand, and kissed the cheek, of every popular tradesman ; they stood all day at every market in the public places, to shew and ingratiate them- selves to the rout ; they employed all their friends to solicit for them ; they kept open tables in every street ; they distributed wine, and bread, and money, even to the vilest of the people. " En Romanes rerum domi- ^ Fragment ed. Mattaire, p. 116. * Virgil, Georg. i. 514. — [The chariot is borne onwards by the horses, nor does the wbeei give heed to the reins.] 4 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. nos !"^ Behold the masters of the world begging from door to door. This particular humble way to greatness is now out of fashion ; but yet every ambitious person is still, in some sort, a Eoman candidate. He must feast and bribe, and attend and flatter, and adore many beasts, though not the beast with many heads. Catiline, who was so proud that he could not content himself with a less power than Sylla's, was yet so humble for the attaining of it, as to make himself the most contemptible of all servants, to be a public bawd, to provide whores, and something worse, for all the young gentlemen of Rome, whose hot lusts, and courages, and heads, he thought he might make use of. And, since I happen here to propose Catiline for my instance (though there be thousand of examples for the same thing,) give me leave to transcribe the character which Cicero gives of this noble slave,'' because it is a general description of all ambitious men, and which Machiavel, perhaps, would say ought to be the rule of their life and actions : " This man (says he, as most of you may well re- member) had many artificial touches and strokes, that looked like the beauty of great virtues ; his intimate conversation was with the worst of men, and yet he seemed to be an admirer and lover of the best ; he was furnished with all the nets of lust and luxury, and yet wanted not the arms of labour and industry : neither do I believe that there was ever any monster in nature, composed out of so many different and disagreeing parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honour- 5 Virgil, ^n. i. 282 :— fovebit Romanes rerum dominos, geutenique togatam. ^ Cicero, Orat. pro M. Ccelio. OF LIBERTY. 5 able persons; who more a favourite to the most infa- mous ? who, sometimes, appeared a braver champion ; who, at other times, a bolder enemy to his countrey ? who more dissolute in his pleasures ; who more patient in his toils ? who more rapacious in robbing ; who more profuse in giving ? Above all things, this was remark- able and admirable in him, the arts he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to retain it with great complaisance, to communicate all things to them, to watch and serve all the occasions of their fortune, both with his money and his interest, and his industry ; and, if need were, not by sticking at any wickedness whatsoever that might be useful to them, to bend and turn about his own nature and laveer with every wind ; to live severely with the melancholy, mer- rily with the pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with the young, desperately with the bold, and de- bauchedly with the luxurious : with this variety and multiplicity of his nature — as he had made a collection of friendships with all the most wicked and reckless of all nations ; so, by the artificial simulation of some virtues, he made a shift to ensnare some honest and eminent persons into his familiarity. Neither could so vast a design as the destruction of this empire have been undertaken by him, if the immanity of so many vices had not been covered and disguised by the appear- ances of some excellent qualities." I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, " who became all things to all men," that he might destroy all ; who only wanted the assistance of fortune, to have been as great as his friend Caesar was a little after him. And the ways of Caesar to compass the same ends (I mean till the civil war, which was but another man- ner of setting his countrey on fire) were not unlike 6 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. these, though he used, afterward, his unjust dominion with more moderation, than I think the other would have done. Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted with them both, and with many such like gentlemen of his time, says, " that it is the nature of ambition, to make men liars and cheaters, to hide the truth in their breasts, and shew, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the mea- sure of their own interest, and to make a good coun- tenance without the help of a good will."' And can there be freedom with this perpetual constraint ? what is it but a kind of rack, that forces men to say what they have no mind to ? I have wondered at the extravagant and barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises which I find of so deformed an action ; who, though he was one of the seven grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed, before, his countrey from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips, cut off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he might, under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius, be received into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians,) and get into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It is great pity, the Babylonians suspected not his false- hood, that they might have cut off his hands too, and whipt him back again. But the design succeeded ; he betrayed the city, and was made governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his offending slave with so little mercy, as ambition did this Zopirus ? and yet how many are there, in all nations, who imitate him in ' Sallust, De Bell. Catil. c. x. OF LIBERTY. 7 some degree for a less reward ; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment or some honour (as they call it,) yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatized ! But you may say, though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry. I grant, sometimes they may ; but then, that industry must be such, as cannot consist with liberty, though it may with honesty. Thou art careful, frugal, painful ; we commend a servant so, but not a friend. Well then, we must acknowledge the toil and drudgery which we are forced to endure in this ascent ; but we are epicures and lords when once we are gotten up into the high places. This is but a short appren- ticeship, after which we are made free of a royal com- pany. If we fall in love with any beauteous women, we must be content that they should be our mistresses whilst we woo them ; as soon as we are wedded and enjoy, it is we shall be the masters. I am willing to stick to this similitude in the case of greatness : we enter into the bonds of it, like those of matrimony ; we are bewitched with the outward and painted beauty, and take it for better or worse, before we know its true nature and interior incon- veniences. A great fortune (says Seneca) is a great servitude ; but many are of that opinion which Brutus imputes (I hope untruly)^ even to that patron of liberty, ^ Bishop Hurd says, that this parenthesis " I hope untruly " did honour to Cowley's candour as well as his sense, and he defends Cicero from the imputation of thinking that death, 8 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. his friend Cicero : " We fear (says he to Atticus) death, and banishment, and poverty, a great deal too much. Cicero, I am afraid, thinks these to be the worst of evils ; and if he have but some persons, from whom he can obtain what he has a mind to, and others who will flatter and worship him, seems to be well enough con- tented with an honourable servitude, if any thing, indeed, ought to be called honourable in so base and contume- lious a condition." This was spoken as became the bravest man who was ever born in the bravest common- wealth. But with us, generally, no condition passes for servitude, that is accompanied with great riches, with honours, and with the service of many inferiors. This is but a deception of the sight through a false medium ; for if a groom serve a gentleman in his chamber, that gentleman a lord, and that lord a prince ; the groom, the gentleman, and the lord, are as much servants one as the other : the circumstantial difference of the one's getting only his bread and wages, the second a plentiful, and the third a superfluous estate, is no more intrinsical to this matter, than the difierence be- tween a plain, a rich, and gaudy livery. I do not say, that he who sells his whole time and his own will for banishment, and poverty, were the worst of evils. " If Brutus," he adds, "brought this charge against Cicero, he forgot him- self." And he cites from Cicero's epistles two noble sentences, in -which the great orator speaks with due contempt of the suc- cessful CiBsar. " Cajsar," he says, with a sneer, "has his luck (suam fortunara), but, for himself, he, Cicero, thought that such success was worse than being crucified." " Una res est ea miserior adispisci quod ita volueris." Ep. ad Att. I. vii. 11. " Was not this," asks Hurd, " spoken as became thfe bravest man that was ever born in the bravest commonwealth?" Such words, in an age which worships money and success, however basely obtained, should make some ears burn. OF LIBERTY. 9 one hundred thousand, is not a wiser merchant than he who does it for one hundred pounds ; but I will swear, they are both merchants, and that he is happier than both, who can live contentedly without selling that estate to which he was born. But this dependance upon superiors is but one chain of the lovers of power : Amatorem trecentae Pirithoum cohibent catense.^ Let us begin with him by break of day : for by that time he is besieged by two or three hundred suitors ; and the hall and antichambers (all the outworks) pos- sessed by the enemy : as soon as his chamber opens, they are ready to break into that, or to corrupt the guards, for entrance. This is so essential a part of greatness, that whosoever is without it, looks like a fallen favourite, like a person disgraced, and condemned to do what he pleases all the morning. There are some who, rather than want this, are contented to have their rooms filled up every day with murmuring and cursing creditors, and to charge bravely through a body of them to get to their coach. Xow, I would fain know which is the worst duty, that of any one particular person who waits to speak with the great man, or the great man's, who waits every day to speak with all the company. Aliena negotia centum Per caput, et circa saliunt latus — a hundred businesses of other men (many unjust, and most impertinent) fly continually about his head and ears, and strike him in the face like Dorres. Let us ^ Horace, Odes, iii. iv. 79. " Three hundred chains confine the amorous Pirithous,"' — for being Pluto's rival. lo COWLEY'S ESSAYS. contemplate him a little at another special scene of glory, and that is, his table. Here he seems to be the lord of all nature : the earth affords him her best metals for his dishes, her best vegetables and animals for his food ; the air and sea supply him with their choicest birds and fishes ; and a great many men, who look like masters, attend upon him ; and yet, when all this is done, even all this is hut table dhoste ; it is crowded with people for whom he cares not, with many parasites and some spies, with the most burdensome sort of guests, the endeavourers to be witty. But every body pays him great respect ; every body commends his meat, that is, his money ; every body admires the exquisite dressing and ordering of it, that is, his clerk of the kitchen, or his cook ; every body loves his hospitality, that is, his vanity. But I desire to know why the honest inn-keeper, who provides a public table for his profit, should be but of a mean profession ; and he, who does it for his honour, a munificent prince. You will say, because one sells, and the other gives : nay, both sell, though for different things ; the one for plain money, the other for I know not what jewels, whose value is in custom and in fancy. If then his table be made a snare (as the Scripture speaks) to his liberty., where can he hope for freedom ? There is always, and every where, some restraint upon him.'*^ He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with '" Horace, Satires, bk. ii. vi. 34. "A hundred affairs of other people buzz round one on every side. Roscius begg'd that you'd meet him at the Court House before eight o'clock in the morning ; the clerks said that you were to remember, Quintus, to return to-day about an important public affair. Mind and get Mjecenas to sign these tablets, &c." Horace pic- tares the inconveniences of a public life in town. OF LIBERTY. ix formalities. The half hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, the superlative at the door ; and, if the person be pa)i huper sehastiis^^^ there is a hypersuperla- tive ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate : as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the sea, Hitherto shalt thou go., and no further }- Perditur haec inter misero lux,'^ Thus wretchedly the precious day is lost. How many impertinent letters and visits must he re- ceive, and sometimes answer both too as impertinently ! He never sets his foot beyond his threshold, unless, like a funeral, he have a train to follow him ; as if, like the dead corpse, he could not stir, till the bearers were all ready. " My life (says Horace, speaking to one of these magnificos) is a great deal more easy and commodious than thine, in that I can go into the market, and cheapen what I please, without being wondered at ; and take my horse and ride as far as Tarentum, without being missed." '^ It is an unpleasant constraint to be always " One to be bowed to, more than all ; a thrice worshipful person. Cowley seems to have written this sentence in English characters. '^ Job xxxviii.ll. ^ Horace, Sat. ii. vi. 59 : — Perditur hsec inter misero lux : non sine votis, rus, quando te aspiciani ? '* A free translation of part of Horace's Satire, bk. i. vi. ad- dressed to Maecenas : — quacunque libido est Incedo solus, percontor quanti olus ac far. He closes up this fine satire with a list of his little but free en- 12 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. under the sight and observation, and censure of others ; as there may be vanity in it, so, methinks, there should be vexation, too, of spirit : and I wonder how princes can endure to have two or three hundred men stand gazing on them whilst they are at dinner, and taking notice of every bit they eat. Nothing seems greater and more lordly than the multitude of domestic ser- vants ; but even this too, if weighed seriously, is a piece of servitude ; unless you will be a servant to them (as many men are,) the trouble and care of yours in the government of them c>ll is much more than that of every one of them in their observance of you. I take the pro- fession of a school-master to be one of the most useful, and which ought to be of the most honourable in a commonwealth ; yet certainly all his fasces and tyran- nical authority over so many boys takes away his own liberty more than theirs. I do but slightly touch upon all these particulars of the slavery of greatness : I shake but a few of their outward chains ; their anger, hatred, jealousy, fear, envy, grief, and all the et ccBtera of their passions, which are the secret, but constant, tyrants and torturers of their life, I omit here, because, though they be symp- toms most frequent and violent in this disease, yet they are common too, in some degree, to the epidemical disease of life itself. But the ambitious man, though he be so many ways a slave (O toties servus!) yet he bears it bravely and he- roically ; he struts and looks big upon the stage ; he thinks himself a real prince in his masking-habit, and joyments and says, " With such things as these I comfort m3-self, living more sweetly than if my grandfather had been a Quaestor, and my father, and uncle too, into the bargain." OF LIBERTY. 13 deceives, too, all the foolish part of his spectators : he is a slave in saturnalihus. The covetous man is a down- right servant, a draught-horse without bells or feathers ; ad metaUxL damnatus, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude ; and, to increase his misery, a worker there for he knows not whom : He heapeth up riches., and knows not who shall enjoy them ;^^ it is only sure, that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an indigent needy slave ; he will hardly allow himself clothes and board- wages : Unciatim vix de demenso suo, Suum defraudans geuium, comparsit miser ; '^ He defrauds not only other men, but his own genius ; he cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so apparent, that I leave it, as evident to every man's sight, as well as judgment. It seems a more difficult work to prove that the voluptuous man, too, is but a servant : what can be more the life of a freeman, or, as we say ordinarily, of a gentleman, than to follow nothing but his own plea- sures ? Why, I will tell you who is that true freeman, and that true gentleman ; not he who blindly follows all his pleasures (the very name of follower is servile) ; but he who rationally guides them, and is not hindered by outward impediments in the conduct and enjoyment of them. If I want skill or force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own ; yet, in the truth of the matter, I am at that time rather '* Psalm xxxix. 6. '^ Tereuce, Phormio, act I. sc. i. v. 33. A suflScient transla- tion is given in the text. 14 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. liis man, than he my horse. The voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly ; the other, whom we spoke of before, the am- bitious and the covetous, were /caKci drjpla, evil wild beasts; these are yaaripeg o^oyai, slow bellies, as our translation renders it, but the word apyai (which is a fantastical word, with two directly opposite significa- tions) will bear as well the translation o^ quick or diligent bellies; and both interpretations may be applied to these men. IMetrodorus said, " that he had learnt dXrjdojQ yacr-pL -^api'C^rrQai, to give his belly just thanks for all his pleasures." This, by the calumniators of Epicurus's philosophy, was objected as one of the most scandalous of all their sayings ; which, according to my charitable understanding, may admit a very virtuous sense, which is, that he thanked his own belly for that moderation, in the customary appetites of it, which can only give a man liberty and happiness in this world. Let this suffice at present to be spoken of those great triumviri of the world; the covetous man, who is a mean villain, like Lepidus ; the ambitious, who is a brave one, like Octa- vius ; and the voluptuous, who is a loose and debauched one, like Mark Antony : Quisnam igitur liber ? Sapiens, sibique imperiosus : '^ Not Oenomaus,^^ who commits himself wholly to a cha- rioteer, that may break his neck : but the man, " Horace, Sat. ii. vii. 83. " Who then is free? the wise man who has dominion over himself: whom neither poverty, death, nor chains affright, Avho checks his appetites, contemns honours, &c." One of Horace's slaves, taking advantage of the Saturnalia, reads his master a fine lesson. The verses which follow seem to be an expansion of some of Davus' thoughts. 18 Virgil, Georg. iii. 7. OF LIBERTY. 15 Who governs his own course with steady hand, Who does himself with sovereign power command ; Whom neither death nor poverty does fright, Who stands not aukwardly in his own light Agaijist the truth : who can, Avhen pleasures knock Loud at his door, keep firm the bolt and lock. Who can, though honour at his gate should stay In all her masking clothes, send her away, And cry, Be gone, I have no mind to play. This, I confess, is a freeman : but it may be said, that many persons are so shackled by their fortune, that they are hindered from enjoyment of that manumission, which they have obtained from virtue. I do both understand, and in part feel, the weight of this objection : all I can answer to it is, that we must get as much liberty as we can, we must use our iitmost endeavours, and, when all that is done, be contented with the length of that line which is allowed us. If you ask me, in what condition of life I think the most allowed ; I should pitch upon that sort of people, whom King James was wont to call the happiest of our nation, the men placed in the country by their fortune above an high-constable, and yet be- neath the trouble of a justice of peace ; in a moderate plenty, without any just argument for the desire of in- creasing it by the care of many relations ; and with so much knowledge and love of piety and philosophy (that is, of the study of God's laws, and of his creatures) as may afford him matter enough never to be idle, though without business ; and never to be melancholy, though without sin or vanity. I shall conclude this tedious discourse with a prayer of mine in a copy of Latin verses, of which I remember no other part ; and {pour f aire bonne louche^ with some other verses upon the same subject : " Magna Deus, quod ad has vitse brevis attiuet horas, Da mihi, da panem libertatemque, nee ultra i6 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Sollicitas effundo preces : si quid datur ultra, Accipiam gratus ; si uon, contentus abibo." For the few hours of life allotted me, Give me (great God) but bread and liberty. I'll beg no more : if more thou'rt pleas'd to give, I'll thankfully that overplus receive : If beyond this no more be freely sent, I'll thank for this, and go away content. MARTIAL, LIB. I. EP. LVL " Vota tui breviter/' &c. |ELL then. Sir, you shall know how far extend The prayers and hopes of your poetic friend. He does not palaces nor manors crave, Would he no lord, but less a lord would have ; The ground he holds, if he his own can call, He quarrels not with heaven, because 'tis small : Let gay and toilsome greatness others please. He loves of homely littleness the ease.'^ Can any man in gilded rooms attend. And his dear hours in humble visits spend ; '^ Hurd calls attention to this charming line, and urges that it is one of the best of Cowley's, who, by the way, is frequently happy in the same style. " The reader of taste feels the dif- ference between this verse and that of the original, though it be no bad one," says the Bishop : — Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus araet. OF LIBERTY. 17 When in the fresh and beauteous fields he may With various healthful pleasures fill the day ? If there be man (ye gods !) I ought to hate, Dependance and attendance be his f.ite. Still let him busy be, and in a crowd, And very much a slave, and very proud : Thus he perhaps powerful and rich may grow ; No matter, O ye gods ! that I'll allow : But let him peace and freedom never see ; Let him not love this life, who loves not me. MARTIAL, LIB. 11. EP. LIIL " Via fieri liber ?" &c. jOULD you be free ? 'Tis your chief wish, you say : Come on ; I'll shew thee, friend, the certain way. If to no feasts abroad thou lov'st to go, Whilst bounteous God does bread at home bestow ; If thou the goodness of thy clothes dost prize By thine own use, and not by others' eyes ; If (only safe from weathers) thou can'st dwell In a small house, but a convenient shell ; If thou, without a sigh, or golden wish. Canst look upon thy beechen bowl, and dish ; K in thy mind such power and greatness be, The Persian king's a slave compar'd with thee. 1 8 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. MARTIAL, LIB. II. EP. LXVIIL " Quod te nomine," &c. iiisa ^?^HAT I do you, with humble bows no more, ^ And danger of my naked head, adore ; That I, who, Loi^d and master^ cry'd erewhile, Salute you, in a new and different stile, By your own name, a scandal to you now, Think not, that I forget myself or you : By loss of all things, by all others sought. This freedom, and the freeman's hat is bought. A lord and master no man wants, but he Who o'er himself has no authority. Who does for honours and for riches strive. And follies, without which lords cannot live. If thou from fortune dost no servant crave. Believe it, thou no master need'st to have. ODE, UPON LIBERTY. I. REEDOM with Virtue takes her seat; Her proper place, her only scene. Is in the golden mean, She lives not with the poor, nor with the great. The wings of those Necessity has dipt. And they're in Fortune's Bridewell whipt To the laborious task of bread ; These are by various tyrants captive led. Now wild Ambition with imperious force Rides, reins, and spurs them, like th' unruly horse. OF LIBERTY. i And servile Avarice yokes them now, Like toilsome oxen, to the plow. And sometimes Lust, like the misguiding light, Draws them through all the labyrinths of night. If any few among the great there be From these insulting passions free, Yet we ev'n those, too, fetter'd see By custom, business, crowds, and formal decency. And wheresoe'er they stay, and wheresoe'er they go, Impertinencies round them flow : These are the small uneasy things WTiich about greatness still are found. And rather it molest, than wound : Like gnats, which too much heat of summer brings ; But cares do swarm there, too, and those have stings : As, when the honey does too open lie, A thousand wasps about it fly : iN'or will the master ev'n to share admit ; 'Tis morning : well ; I fain would yet sleep on ; You cannot now ; you must be gone To court, or to the noisy hall : Besides, the rooms without are crowded all ; The stream of business does begin. And a spring-tide of clients is come in. Ah, cruel guards, which this poor prisoner keep ! Will they not suffer him to sleep ? Make an escape ; out at the postern flee. And get some blessed hours of liberty : With a few friends, and a few dishes dine. And much of mirth and moderate wine. 20 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. To thy bent mind some relaxation give, And steal one day out of thy life, to live. Oh, happy man (he cries) to whom kind heaven Has such a freedom always given ! Why, mighty madman, what should hinder thee From being every day as free ? 3. In all the freeborn nations of the air, Never did bird a spirit so mean and sordid bear, As to exchange his native liberty Of soaring boldly up into the sky, His liberty to sing, to perch, or fly, When, and wherever he thought good, And all his innocent pleasures of the wood. For a more plentiful or constant food. Nor ever did ambitious rage Make him into a painted cage, Or the false forest^^ of a well-hung room. For honour and preferment, come. Now, blessings on you all, ye heroic race. Who keep your primitive powers and rights so well. Though men and angels fell. Of all material lives the highest place To you is justly given ; And ways and walks the nearest heaven. Whilst wretched we, yet vain and proud, think fit To boast, that we look up to it. Even to the universal tyrant. Love, You homage pay but once a year : '^° Alluding, 110 doubt, to the tapestry, common enough, and often very fine too, of Cowley's time. OF LIBERTY. Xone so degenerous and unbirdly^^ prove, As his perpetual yoke to bear. None, but a few unhappy houshold fowl, Whom human lordship does controul ; Who from their birth corrupted were By bondage, and by man's example here. He's no small prince, who every day Thus to himself can say ; Now will I sleep, now eat, now sit, now walk, Now meditate alone, now with acquaintance talk. This I will do, here I will stay. Or, if my fancy call me away. My man and I will presently go ride ; (For we, before, have nothing to provide, Nor, after, are to render an account) To Dover, Berwick, or the Cornish mount. If thou but a short journey take. As if thy last thou wert to make. Business must be despatch'd, ere thou canst part, Nor canst thou stir, unless there be A hundred horse and men to wait on thee. And many a mule, and many a cart ; What an unwieldy man thou art ! The Rhodian Colossus so A journey, too, might go. ^' A happy coinage of a word. Degenei'ous is the old (and better?) form of degenerate; and why not unbirdly as well as unmanly? COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 5. Wliere honour, or where conscience, does not bind. No other law shall shackle me ; Slave to myself I will not be. Nor shall my future actions be confin'd By my own present mind. Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand For days, that yet belong to fate. Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate, Before it falls into his hand : The bondman of the cloister so, All that he does receive, does always owe ; And still, as time comes in, it goes away Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell. Which his hour's work, as well as hours, does tell ! Unhappy, till the last, the kind releasing knell. 6. If life should a well-order'd poem be (In which he only hits the white Who joins true profit with the best delight) The more heroic strain let others take, IVIine the Pindaric way I'll make ; The matter shall be grave, the numbers loose and free. It shall not keep one settled pace of time, In the same tune it shall not always chime. Nor shall each day just to his neighbour rhime ; A thousand liberties it shall dispense, And yet shall manage all without offence Or to the sweetness of the sound, or greatness of the sense: Nor shall it never from one subject start, Nor seek transitions to depart, OF LIBERTY. 23 Xor its set way o'er stiles and bridges make, Nor thorough lanes a compass take, As if it fear'd some trespass to commit. When the wide air's a road for it. So the imperial eagle does not stay Till the whole carcase he devour, That's fallen into its power : As if his generous hunger understood That he can never want plenty of food. He only sucks the tasteful blood ; And to fresh game flies chearfully away; To kites and meaner birds, he leaves the mangled prey II. OF SOLITUDE. UNQUAM minus solus, quam cum solus," ' is now become a very vulgar saying. Every man, and almost every boy, for these seven- teen hundred years, has had it in his mouth. But it was at first spoken by the excellent Scipio, who was without question a most eloquent and witty person, as well as the most wise, most worthy, most happy, and the greatest of all mankind. His meaning, no doubt, was this, that he found more satisfaction to his mind, and more improvement of it, by solitude than by com- pany; and, to shew that he spoke not this loosely, or out of vanity, after he had made Rome mistress of almost the whole world, he retired himself from it by a voluntary exile, and at a private house in the middle of a wood near Linternum,- passed the remainder of his ' "Never less alone than when alone;" a saying generally ascribed to Cicero. - Seneca, Ep. Ixxxvi. In this epistle, Seneca describes Scipio's voluntary retreat, and his little villa, built of squared stone (lapide quadrato) flanked with two little towers. " Does the great captain, once the terror of Carthage, live here," said OF SOLITUDE. 25 glorious life no less gloriously. This house, Seneca went to see so long after with great veneration ; and, among other things, describes his baths to have been of so mean a structure, that now, says he, the basest of the people would despise them, and cry out, " Poor Scipio understood not how to live." What an authority is here for the credit of retreat ! and happy had it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest prosperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said by Monsieur de Montaigne, " that ambition itself might teach us to love solitude ; there is nothing does so much hate to have companions." It is true, it loves to have its elbows free, it detests to have company on either side ; but it delights above all things in a train behind, aye, and ushers too before it. But the greatest part of men are so far from the opinion of that noble Roman, that, if they chance at any time to be without company, they are like a becalmed ship ; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal. It is very fantastical and contra- dictory in human nature, that men should love them- selves above all the rest of the world, and yet never endure to be Avith themselves. When they are in love with a mistress, all other persons are importunate and burden- some to them. " Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens," they would live and die with her alone. " Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere sylvis, Qua nulla humane sit via trita pede. I, " and here wash the mud from his body on his return from the plough,'" &c. 26 COWLETS ESSAYS. Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atrS, Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis."^ With thee for ever I in woods could rest, Where never human foot the ground has prest. Thou from all shades the darkness ca:ist exclude, And from a desart banish solitude. And yet our dear self is so wearisome to us, that we can scarcely support its conversation for an hour to- gether. This is such an odd temper of mind, as Catullus expresses towards one of his mistresses, whom we may suppose to have been of a very unsociable humour,* " Odi, et amo : quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio; sed fieri sentio, et excrucior."' I hate, and yet I love thee too ; How can that be ? I know not how ; Only that so it is I know, And feel with torment that 'tis so. It is a deplorable condition, this, and drives a man sometimes to pitiful shifts, in seeking how to avoid himself. The truth of the matter is, that neither he who is a fop in the world, is a fit man to be alone ; nor he who has set his heart much upon the world, though he have never so much understanding; so that solitude can be well fitted and sit right, but upon a very few persons. They must have enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity; if the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had better be in a fair, than in a wood alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us perhaps, and pick our Tibullus, xiii. 9. De Amore Suo, Ixxxii OF SOLITUDE. 27 pockets, in the midst of company; but, like robbers, they use to strip and bind, or murder us, when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat from men, and to fall into the hands of devils. It is like the punishment of parricides among the Romans, to be sewed into a bag, with an ape, a dog, and a serpent.^ The first work, therefore, that a man must do, to make himself capable of the good of solitude, is, the very eradication of all lusts ; for how is it possible for a man to enjoy himself, while his affections are tied to things without himself? In the second place, he must learn the art, and get the habit of thinking ; for this, too, no less than well speaking, depends upon much practice ; and cogitation is the thing which distinguishes the soli- tude of a God from a wild beast. Now, because the soul of man is not, by its own nature or observation, fur- nished with sufficient materials to work upon, it is neces- sary for it to have continual recourse to learning and books for fresh supplies, so that the solitary life will grow indigent, and be ready to starve, without them ; but if once we be thoroughly engaged in the love of letters, instead of being wearied with the length of any day, we shall only complain of the shortness of our whole life. " vita, stulto longa, sapienti brevis ! "^ life, long to the fool, short to the wise ! The first minister of state has not so much business in public, as a wise man has in private : if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be ^ Lex de Parricidis. ^ " vita, misero longa, felici brevis !" life, long to the un happy, to the happy brief. — Puhlius S>/rtis. 28 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. in company ; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and nature, under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, " that a man does not know how to pass his time." It would have been but ill spoken by Methusalem in the nine hundred sixty- ninth year of his life ; so far it is from us, who have not time enough to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any scienct this hard truth I tench, methhiks I see The monster London'-' laugh at me ; I should at thee too, foolish city, If it were fit to laugh at misery; But thy estate I pity. 12. Let but thy wicked men from out thee go. And all the fools that crowd thee so. Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington wilt grow, A solitude almost. " " London has a great belly but no palate." — Hobbes. Hist. Civil War, p. 169, quoted by Hurd. III. OF OBSCURITY. •' Nam neque divitibus contingunt gaudia solis ; " Nee vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit."' God made not pleasures only for the rich ; Nor have those men without their share too liv'd, Who both in life and death the world deceiv'd. HIS seems a strange sentence, thus literally translated, and looks as if it were in vindi- cation of the men of business (for who else can deceive the world ?) whereas it is in commendation of those who live and die so obscurely, •that the world takes no notice of them. This Horace calls deceiving the world ; and in another place uses the same phrase, *' Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae."^ The secret tracks of the deceiving life. It is very elegant in Latin, but our English word will hardly bear up to that sense ; and therefore Mr. Broom translates it very well — Or from a life, led, as it were, by stealth. ' Horace, Ep. i. xvii. 9. 2 Horace, Ep. i. xviii. 103. OF OBSCURITY. 33 Yet we say, in our language, a thing deceives our sight, when it passes before us unperceived : and we may say well enough, out of the same author,-^ Sometimes with sleep, sometimes with w ine, we strive The cares of life and troubles to deceive. But that is not to deceive the world, but to deceive our- selves, as Quintilian says,'* " vitam fallere," to draw on still, and amuse, and deceive our life, till it be advanced insensibly to the fatal period, and fall into that pit which nature hath prepared for it. The meaning of all this is no more than that most vulgar saying, " Bene qui la- tuit, bene vixit," he has lived well, who has lain well hidden. Which, if it be a truth, the world (I will swear) is sufficiently deceived : for my part, I think it is, and that the pleasantest condition of life is in incog- nito. What a brave privilege is it, to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from re- ceiving or paying all kind of ceremonies ! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime, for two good and agree- able friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of ^neas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage; Venus herself A vail of thicken'd air around them cast, That none might know, or see them, as they past.^ The common story of Demosthenes' confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman Hor. Sat. 11. vii. 114. * Quint, Declam. deApib. * Virgil, ^n. i. 415. D 34 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. say, as he passed, " This is that Demosthenes/' is won- derful ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any) ; but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus : after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of. And yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known, or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the in- vaders of most of our time : we expose our life to a quo- tidian ague of frigid impertinencies, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Kow, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot com- prehend the honour that lies in that : whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, "This is that Bucephalus," or, " This is that Incitatus," when they were led prancing through the streets, as " This is that Alexander," or, "This is that Domitian;" and OF OBSCURITY. 35 truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship, than he the empire. I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue ; not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and, like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides ; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man, whilst he lives ; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us.^ Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body ; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit) : this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this " muta persona," I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest ^ So the poet : — " Tell us, ye dead, Will none of ye proclaim the dreadful story, What is it ye are, and we shall shortly be ? " '' Cowley means," says Hurd, "will none inform us whether posthumous fame makes us happier iu another life* " 36 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. actors that fill the stage with show and noise, nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well. Seneca, ex Thyeste, Act. II. Chor. " Stet, quicumque volet potens Aulae culmine lubrico : Me dulcis saturet quies. Obscuro positus loco, Leni perfruar otio. NuUis nota Quiritibus ^tas per taciturn fluat. Sic ciim transierint mei iSTullo cum strepitu dies, Plebeius moriar senex. Illi mors gravis incubat, Qui, notus nimis omnibus, Ignotus moritur sibi." Upon the slippery tops of human state. The gilded pinnacles of fate. Let others proudly stand, and, for a while The giddy danger to beguile. With joy, and with disdain, look down on all, Till their heads turn, and down they fall. Me, O ye gods, on earth, or else so near That I no fall to earth may fear. And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat From the long ruins of the great.' Here wrapt in th' arms of quiet let rae lye ; Quiet, companion of obscurity. ^ A wonderfully fine line, of which there is no trace in the original. H. OF OBSCURITY. 37 Here let my life with as much silence slide, As time, that measures it, does glide. Xor let the breath of infamy or fame, From town to town echo about my name. Nor let my homely death embroider'd be With scutcheon or with elegy. An old plebeian let me die, Alas, all then are such as well as I. To him, alas, to him, I fear, The face of death will terrible appear ; Who, in his life flattering his senseless pride, By being known to all the world beside, Does not himself, when he is dying, know, Xor what he is, nor whither he's to go. IV. OF AGRICULTURE. jIIE first wish of Virgil (as you will find anon by his verses) was to be a good philosopher ; the second, a good husbandman : and God (whom he seemed to understand better than most of the most learned heathens) dealt with him, just as he did with Solomon ; because he prayed for wisdom in the first place, he added all things else, which were subordinately to be desired. He made him one of the best philosophers, and best husbandmen ; and, to adorn and communicate both those faculties, the best poet : he made him, besides all this, a rich man, and a man who desired to be no richer — " O fortunatus nimium, et bona qui sua uovit!" ' To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city ; to ' Virgil:- O fortunati nimium, sua si bona norint. Agricolse, quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis Fundit bumo facilem victum justissima tellus. husbandmen too happy, if they did but know their own hap- piness, for whom, far from discordant war, the grateful earth pours from her bosom an easy abundance. OF AGRICULTURE. 39 he a philosopher, from the world ; or rather, a retreat irom the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's. But, since nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and fortune allows but to a very f^w the op- portunities or possibility of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of human affairs that we can make, are the employments of a country life. It is, as Columella calls it, " Res sine dubitatione proxima, et quasi consanguinea sapientiae," ^ the nearest neighbour, or rather next in kindred, to philosophy. Yarro says, the principles of it are the same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature, Earth, Water, Air, and the Sun. It does certainly comprehend more parts of philosophy, than any one profession, art, or science, in the world besides : and therefore Cicero^ says, the pleasures of a husbandman, " mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur accedere," come very nigh to those of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist : the utility of it, to a man's self; the usefulness, or rather necessity, of it to all the rest of mankind ; the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity. The utility (I mean plainly the lucre of it) is not so great, now in our nation, as arises from merchandise and the trading of the city, from whence many of the best estates and chief honours of the kingdom are derived : we have no men now fetched from the plough to be made lords, as they were in Rome to be made consuls and dictators ; the reason of which I conceive to be 2 Lib. i. c. 1. ^ Cicero, De Senectute. Both this and the passage from Columella are rendered in the text. 40 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. from an evil custom, now grown as strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put their children to be bred up apprentices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such who are so poor, that, when they come to be men, they have not where-withall to set up in it, and so can only farm some small parcel of ground, the rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence of the tenant : whilst they who are proprietors of the land are either too proud, or, for want of that kind of educa- tion, too ignorant, to improve their estates, though the means of doing it be as easy and certain in this, as in any other track of commerce. If there were always two or three thousand youths, for seven or eight years, bound to this profession, that they might learn the whole art of it, and afterwards be enabled to be masters of it, by a moderate stock ; I cannot doubt but that we should see as many aldermen's estates made in the country, as now we do out of all kind of merchandizing in the city.^ There are as many ways to be rich, and, which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, with- out such negligence as can neither have excuse nor pity ; for a little ground will, without question, feed a little family, and the superfluities of life (which are now in some cases by custom made almost necessary) must be supplied out of the superabundance of art and in- dustry, or contemned by as great a degree of phi- losophy. "* Cowley here anticipates, by suggesting an apprenticeship of seven or eight years of two or three thousand youths to agri- culture, the scientific pursuit of that profession which indeed we ai-e only just now entering upon. Bacon, Sir W. Temple, John Evelyn and other thinkers have, as well as Cowley, urged the scientific pursuit of agriculture. The essay is well worthy of study. OF AGRICULTURE. 41 As for the necessity of this art, it is evident enough, since this can live without all others, and no one other without this. This is like speech, without which the society of men cannot be preserved ; the others, like figures and tropes of speech, which serve only to adorn it. ]\Iany nations have lived, and some do still, without any art but this : not so elegantly, I confess, but still they live ; and almost all the other arts, which are here practised, are beholding to this for most of their ma- terials. The innocence of this life is the next thing for which I commend it ; and if husbandmen preserve not that, they are much to blame, for no men are so free from the temptations of iniquity. They live by what they can get by industry from the earth ; and others, by what they can catch by craft from men. They live upon an estate given them by their mother ; and others, upon an estate cheated from their brethren. They live, like sheep and kine, by the allowances of nature ; and others, like wolves and foxes, by the acquisitions of rapine. And, I hope, I may affirm (without any offence to the great) that sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves and foxes are pernicious creatures. They are, without dispute, of all men, the most quiet and least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the commonwealth : their manner of life inclines them, and interest binds them, to love peace : in our late mad and miserable civil wars, all other trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, and raised up some great, com- manders, who became famous and mighty for the mis- chiefs they had done : but I do not remember the name of any one husbandman, who had so considerable a share in the twenty years' ruin of his countrey, as to deserve the curses of his countrymen. 42 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. And if great delights be joined with so much inno- cence, I think it is ill done of men, not to take them here, where they are so tame, and ready at hand, rather than hunt for them in courts and cities, where they are so wild, and the chase so troublesome and dangerous. We are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature ; we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy : we walk here in the light and open ways of the divine bounty ; we grope there in the dark and confused la- byrinths of human malice : our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part over- whelmed with their contraries. Here, pleasure looks (methinks) like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife ; it is there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot. Here, is harmless and cheap plenty ; there, guilty and expenseful luxury. I shall only instance in one delight more, the most natural and best-natured of all others, a perpetual com- panion of the husbandman; and that is, the satisfaction of looking round about him, and seeing nothing but th^ effects and improvements of his own art and diligence ; to be always gathering of some fruits of it, and at the same time to behold others ripening, and others budding : to see all his fields and gardens covered with the beau- teous creatures of his own industry ; and to see, like God, that all his works are good : — Hinc atque hinc glomei'antur Orcades ; ipsi Agricolfe taciturn pertentant gaudia pectus. ^ On his heart-strings a secret joy does strike. The antiquity of his art is certainly not to be con- 5 Virgil, .En. i. 504. OF AGRICULTURE. 43 tested bj any other. The three first men in the world, were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier ; and if any man object, that the second of these was a mur- derer, I desire he would consider, that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession, and turned builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Ecclesiasticus^ forbids us to hate husbandry ; because (says he) the Most High has created it. AVe were all born to this art, and taught by nature to nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which they were made, and to which they must return, and pay at last for their sustenance. Behold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons, who are too proud now, not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon it. We may talk what we please of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread- eagles, in fields cTor or cVargent ; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable,' would be the most noble and ancient arms. All these considerations make me fall into the wonder and complaint of Columella, how it should come to pass that all arts or sciences (for the dispute, which is ^ Eccls. chap. vii. 15. "Hate not laborious work, neither husbandry, which the Most High, has nrdainecL^' This injunc- tion stands by itself in the midst of various general benevolent adjurations, such as, "Do no evil, and no harm shall come unto thee.'' At verse 21 we are told, " Let thy soul love a good servant," and the hireling, who works for us, is not to be " neg- lected." " Cowley here very happily assumes the language of he- raldry ; a little loosely, as we now say or and argent without the article. The plough is borne by several good families, so also the coulter or share, the harness, spade, mill-rind, and other implements of labour. Adam, in this sense {vide Ham- let) was the first gentleman who bore arms, when he used a wooden spade. 44 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. an art, and which a science, does not belong to the curi- osity of us husbandmen,) metaphysic, physic, morality, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, &c. which are all, I grant, good and useful faculties, (except only metaphysic, which I do not know whether it be any thing or no ;) but even vaulting, fencing, dancing, attiring, cookery, carving, and such like vanities, should all have public schools and masters, and yet that we should never see or hear of any man, who took upon him the profession of teaching this so pleasant, so virtuous, so profitable, so honourable, so necessary art. A man would think, when he is in serious humour, that it were but a vain, irrational, and ridiculous thing, for a great company of men and women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred several postures and figures, to no purpose, and with no design ; and therefore dancing was invented first, and only practised anciently, in the ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted all in mummery and madness ; the latter being the chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine inspiration : this, I say, a severe man would think ; though I dare not determine so far against so customary a part, now, of good -breeding. And yet, who is there among our gentry, that does not entertain a dancing-master for his children, as soon as they are able to walk ? But did ever any father provide a tutor for his son, to instruct him betimes in the nature and improve- mcDts of that land which he intended to leave him ? That is at least a superfluity, and this a defect, in our manner of education; and therefore I could wish (but cannot in these times much hope to see it) that one col- lege in each university were erected, and appropriated to this study, as well as there are to medicine and the civil law: there would be no need of making a body of OF AGRICULTURE. 45 scholars and fellows, with certain endowments, as in other colleges ; it would suffice, if, after the manner of halls in Oxford, there were only four professors consti- tuted (for it would be too much work for only one master, or principal, as they call him there) to teach these four parts of it: First, Aration, and all things re- lating to it. Secondly, Pasturage. Thirdly, Gardens, Orchards, Vineyards, and Woods. Fourthly, all parts of Rural Economy, which would contain the government of Bees, Swine, Poultry, Decoys, Ponds, &c. and all that which Varro calls villaticas pastiones, together with the sports of the field (which ought to be looked upon not only as pleasures, but as parts of house-keeping), and the domestical conservation and uses of all that is brought in by industry abroad. The business of these professors should not be, as is commonly practised in other arts, only to read pompous and superficial lectures, out of Virgil's Georgics, Pliny, Varro, or Columella ; but to instruct their pupils in the whole method and course of this study, which might be run through per- haps, with diligence, in a year or two : and the con- tinual succession of scholars, upon a moderate taxation for their diet, lodging, and learning, would be a suffi- cient constant revenue for maintenance of the house and the professors, who should be men not chosen for the ostentation of critical literature, but for solid and expe- rimental knowledge of the things they teach ; such men, so industrious and public-spirited, as I conceive Mr. Hartlib* to be, if the gentleman be yet alive : but it is ^ " A gentleman," writes Hurd, "of whom it may be enough to say that he had the honour to live in the friendship of Mede and Milton. The former of these great men addressed some letters to him, and the latter his Tractate on Education." 46 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. needless to speak further of my thoughts of this design, unless the present disposition of the age allowed more probability of bringing it into execution. What I have further to say of the country life, shall be borrowed from the poets, who were always the most faithful and affectionate friends to it. Poetry was born among the shepherds. Xescio qua natale solum dulcedine Musas Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.^ The Muses still love their own native place ; 'T has seciet charms, which nothing can deface. The truth is, no other place is proper for their woric ; one might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise and tumult. As well might corn, as verse, in cities grow ; In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow; Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive •, 'Tis not a ground, in which these plants will thrive. It will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of satire^ which grow most naturally in the worst earth ; and therefore almost all poets, except those who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of great men, that is, without what they could get by flattering of them, have not only withdrawn themselves from the vices and vanities of the grand world, parilev vitiisque jocisque Altius humanis exeruere caput,^° into the innocent happiness of a retired life; but have commended and adorned nothing so much by their ever- ^ Ovid, I. Epist. ex Pont. iii. 35. ^^ Ovid, Fast. i. 300. OF AGRICULTURE. 47 living poems. Hesiod was the first or second poet in the world that remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, preceded him, but I rather believe they were contemporaries) ; and he is the first writer too of the art of husbandry : " he has contributed (says Columella) not a little to our profession ;" I suppose, he means not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very important : his great antiquity is visible through the gravity and simplicity of his style. The most acute of all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity of an oracle. VLXeov ij/ULorv TTCLVTUQ, Thc half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this ; his brother Perses had, by corrupting some great men (f^aatXeag cwpo^ayovQ^ great bribe-eaters he calls them), gotten from him the half of his estate. It is no matter (says he) ; they have not done me so much prejudice, as they imagine : JsrfTiioi, ovo 'iaaGLV bcr^j irkkov ijixicrv Travrog, Ov8' oaov iv [iaXdxy ri /cat da(podiKo} fiey' oveiap, 'K.pv'^avTeg yap txovai Oi^oi (Slop dvOpwTroLai. Unhappy they, to whom God has not reveal'd, By a strong light which must their sense control, That half a great estate 's more than the whole . Unhappy, from whom still conceal'd does lie, Of roots and herbs, the wholesome luxury. This I conceive to be honest Hesiod's meaning. From Homer, we must not expect much concerning our affairs. He was blind, and could neither work in the country, nor enjoy the pleasures of it ; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places ; he was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and ad- ventures of their ancestors ; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, he made a shift to shew his good-will a little. For, though he 48 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. could do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole time was con- sumed in wars and voyages ; yet he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his con- solation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting, and even dunging his own grounds. Ye see, he did not contemn us peasants ; nay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumceus, who kept the hogs, with wonderful respect, c~iov ixpopjjov, the divine swine herd : he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to an husbandman, — d/tEi/Sfro Slog aypdjTrjg.^^ The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but cl.og^ himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood the dignity of our calling ! Among the Romans we have, in the first place, our truly divine Virgil, who, though, by the favour of Maecenas and Augustus, he might have been one of the chief men of Rome, yet chose rather to employ much of his time in the exercise, and much of his immortal wit in the praise and instructions, of a rustic life ; who, though he had written, before, whole books of pastorals and georgics, could not abstain, in his great and imperial poem, from describing Evander, one of his best princes, as living just after the homely manner of an ordinary country- man. He seats him in a throne of maple, and lays him but upon a bear's skin ; the kine and oxen are lowing '^ Theocritus, Idyll xxv, v. 51. The context contains a sufficient translation. OF AGRICULTURE. 49 in his court-yard ; the birds under the eves of his window call him up in the morning ; and when he goes abroad, only two dogs go along with him for his guard : at last, when he brings ^Eneas into his royal cottage, he makes him say this memorable compliment, greater than ever yet was spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or our Whitehall : — Hsec (inquit) liraina victor Alcides subiit, hsec ilium regia cepit : Aude, hospes, contemnere opes : et te quoque dignum Finge Deo, rebiisque veni nou asper egenis,'^ This humble roof, this rustic court, (said he) Receir'd Alcides, crown'd with victory : Scorn not, great guest, the steps where he has trod ; But contemn wealth, and imitate a God. The next man, whom we are much obliged to, both for his doctrine and example, is the next best poet in the world to VirgiP, his dear friend Horace ; who, when Augustus had desired Maecenas to persuade him to come and live domestically and at the same table with him, and to be secretary of state of the whole world under him, or rather jointly with him, for he says, " ut nos in epistolis scribendis adjuvet," could not be tempted to forsake his Sabine, or Tiburtin manor, for so rich and so glorious a trouble. There was never, I think, such an example as this in the world, that he should have so much moderation and courage as to refuse an offer of such greatness, and the emperor so much generosity and good-nature as not to be at all offended with his refusal, but to retain still the same kindness, and express it often to him in most friendly and familiar letters, part of Virgil, iEueid viii. 365. E 5© COWLEY'S ESSAYS. which are still extant. If I should produce all the pas- sages of this excellent author upon the several subjects which I treat of in this book, I must be obliged to trans- late half his works ; of which I may say more truly than, in my opinion, he did of Homer, Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Planius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.'^ I shall content myself upon this particular theme with three only, one out of his Odes, the other out of his Satires, the third out of his Epistles ; and shall for- bear to collect the suffrages of all other poets, which may be found scattered up and down through all their writings, and especially in Martial's. But I must not omit to make some excuse for the bold undertaking of my own unskilful pencil upon the beauties of a face that has been drawn before by so many great masters ; especially, that I should dare to do it in Latin verses (though of another kind), and have the confidence to translate them. I can only say that I love the matter, and that ought to cover many faults ; and that I run not to contend with those before me, but follow to applaud them. " Ep. I. ii. 3. Horace in this Epistle says boldly that to all philosophers and teachers he prefers, as a moral writer. Homer, " who teaches more clearly and better than Chrysippus and Grantor (eminent moral teachers) what is praiseworthy, base, useful, or the contrary." I OF AGRICULTURE. 51 A TRANSLATI0:N^ out of VIRGIL. Georg. Lib. II. 458, |H happy (if his happiness he knows) The country swain, on whom kind heav'n bestows At home all riches, that wise nature needs ; Whom the just earth with easy plenty feeds. 'Tis true, no morning tide of clients comes, And fills the painted channels of his rooms. Adoring the rich figures, as they pass, In tap'stry wrought, or cut in living brass ; Nor is his wool superfluously dy'd With the dear poison of Assyrian pride : Nor do Arabian perfumes vainly spoil The native use and sweetness of his oil. Instead of these, his calm and harmless life, Free from th' alarms of fear, and storms of strife, Does with substantial blessedness abound, And the soft wings of peace cover him round ; Through artless grots the murmuring waters glide ; Thick trees both against heat and cold provide. From whence the birds salute him ; and his ground With lowing herds, and bleating sheep, does sound ; And all the rivers, and the forests nigh, Both food, and game, and exercise, supply. Here, a well-harden'd active youth we see. Taught the great art of cheerful poverty. Here, in this place alone, there still do shine Some streaks of love,, both human and divine ; From hence Astrsea took her flight, and here Still her last foot-steps upon earth appear. 52 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 'Tis true, the first desire, which does controul All the inferior wheels that move my soul, Is, that the Muse me her high priest would make, Into her holiest scenes of mystery take, « And open there to my mind's purged eye V Those wonders, which to sense the gods deny. How in the moon such change of shapes is found ; The moon, the changing world's eternal bound. What shakes the solid earth, what strong disease Dares trouble the firm centre's ancient ease ; AVhat makes the sea retreat, and what advance : " Varieties too regular for chance." ^^ What drives the chariot on of winter's light, And stops the lazy waggon of the night. But, if my dull and frozen blood deny To send forth spirits, that raise a soul so high ! In the next place, let woods and rivers be i My quiet, though inglorious, destiny. I In life's cool vale let my low scene be laid : Cover me, gods, with Tempe's thickest shade. Happy the man, I grant, thrice happy he, Who can through gross efiects their causes see : Whose courage from the deeps of knowledge springs. Nor vainly fears inevitable things ; But does his walk of virtue calmly go Through all th' alarms of death and hell below. Happy ! but, next such conquerors, happy they, Whose humble life lies not in fortune's way. '* Here is a parallel to Dryden, although the argument really only proves a natural law whence, indeed, we may assume a lawgiver : — " Or various atoms, interfering dance, Leapt into form the noble work of chance." OF AGRICULTURE. 53 They, unconcern'd, from their safe distant seat Behold the rods and sceptres of the great. The quarrels of the mighty without fear, And the descent of foreign troops they hear. Nor can ev'n Rome their steady course misguide. With all the lustre of her perishing pride. Them never yet did strife or avarice draw Into the noisy markets of the law, The camps of gowned war ; nor do they live By rules or forms, that many madmen give. Duty for nature's bounty they repay. And her sole laws religiously obey. Some with bold labour plough the faithless main. Some rougher storms in princes' courts sustain. Some swell up their slight sails with popular fame, Charm'd with the foolish whistlings of a name.'^ Some theii* vain wealth to earth again commit ; With endless cares some brooding o'er it sit. Countrey and friends are by some wretches sold. To lie on Tyrian beds, and drink in gold ; No price too high for profit can be shown ; Not brother's blood, nor hazards of their own. Around the world in search of it they roam ; It makes ev'n their antipodes their home ; Meanwhile, the prudent husbandman is found, In mutual duties, striving with his ground, And half the year the care of that does take. That half the year grateful returns does make. '^ Pope has imitated this line, and added to it another which is untrue : — " Or ravished with the whistlings of a name, See Cromwell damned to everlasting fame." Essuy on JIan, iv. 282. 54 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Each fertile month does some new gifts present, And with new work his industry content. This, the young lamb, that the soft fleece doth yield ; This, loads with hay, and that, with corn, the field ; All sorts of fruit crown the rich autumn's pride ; And on a swelling hill's warm stony side, The powerful princely purple of the vine, Twice dy'd with the redoubled sun, does shine. In th' evening to a fair ensuing day, With joy he sees his flocks and kids to play ; And loaded kine about his cottage stand, Inviting with known sound the milker's hand ; And, when from wholesome labour he doth come, With wishes to be there, and wish'd for home, He meets at door the softest human blisses. His chaste wife's welcome, and dear children's kisses. When any rural holidays invite His genius forth to innocent delight, On earth's fair bed, beneath some sacred shade, Amidst his equal friends carelessly laid, He sings thee, Bacchus, patron of the vine. The beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine, Not to the loss of reason, or of strength : To active games and manly sport, at length, Their mirth ascends, and with fill'd veins they see. Who can the best at better trials be. From such the old Hetrurian virtue rose ; Such was the life the prudent Sabines chose ; Such, Rhemus and the god, his brother, led ; From such firm footing Rome grew the world's head.^*^ '^ Cowley omits a line which follows this in the original, as pointed out by Hurd : — " Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces." OF AGRICULTURE. 55 Such was the life that, ev'n till now, does raise The honour of poor Saturn's golden days. Before men, born of earth and buried there. Let in the sea their mortal fate to share : Before new ways of perishing were sought, Before unskilful death on anvils wrought : Before those beasts, which human life sustain, By men, unless to the gods' use, were slain. HOR. EPOD. ODE II. jAPPY the man, whom bounteous gods allow With his own hands paternal grounds to plough ! Like the first golden mortals happy, he. From business and the cares of money free ! No human storms break off, at land, his sleep ; No loud alarms of nature on the deep : From all the cheats of law he lives secure, Nor does th' affronts of palaces endure ; Sometimes, the beauteous marriageable vine He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join ; Sometimes, he lops the barren trees around, And grafts new life into the fruitful wound ; Sometimes, he shears his flock, and, sometimes, he Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. He sees his lowing herds walk o'er the plain, Whilst neighbouring hills low back to them again ; And when the season, rich as well as gay. All her autumnal bounty does display, How is he pleas'd th' increasing use to see, Of his well-trusted labours, bend the tree ! Of which large shares, on the glad sacred days. He gives to friends, and to the gods repays. 56 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. With how much joy does he, beneath some shade By aged trees' reverend embraces made, His careless head on the fresh green recline. His head uncharged with fear or with design. By him a river constantly complains. The birds above rejoice with various strains. And in the solemn scene their orgies keep, Like dreams, mix'd with the gravity of sleep ; Sleep, which does always there for entrance wait, And nought within against it shuts the gate. Nor does the roughest season of the sky. Or sullen Jove, all sports to him deny. He runs the mazes of the nimble hare, His well-mouth'd dogs' glad concert rends the air Or with game bolder, and rewarded more, Pie drives into a toil the foaming boar ; Here flies the hawk t'assault, and there the net, To intercept the travailing fowl, is set ; And all his malice, all his craft, is shown In innocent wars, on beasts and birds alone ; This is the life from all misfortunes free. From thee, the great one, tyrant love, from thee ; And, if a chaste and clean, though homely, wife Be added to the blessings of this life. Such as the antient sun-burnt Sabins were, Such as Apulia, frugal still, does bear. Who makes her children and the house her care, And joyfully the work of life does share, Nor thinks herself too noble or too fine To pin the sheepfold or to milch the kine. Who waits at door against her husband come From rural duties, late, and wearied home, Where she receives him with a kind embrace, A chearful fire, and a more chearful face ; OF AGRICULTURE. 57 And fills the bowl up to her homely lord, And with domestic plenty loads the board : Not all the lustful shell-fish of the sea, Dress'd by the wanton hand of luxury, Nor ortolans nor godwits, nor the rest Of costly names that glorify a feast. Are at the princely tables better chear, Than lamb and kid, lettuce and olives, here. THE COUNTEY MOUSE. A PaPwVPhrase upon Horace, Book IT. Sat. VI. if?^T the large foot of a fair hollow tree, w Close to plough'd ground, seated commodiously, His antient and hereditary house. There dwelt a good substantial country mouse ; Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main, Yet one who once did nobly entertain A city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay, A mouse of high degree, which lost bis way, Wantonly walking forth to take the air. And arriv'd early, and belighted there, For a day's lodging : the good hearty host, (The antient plenty of his hall to boast) Did all the stores produce, that might excite, With various tastes, the courtier's appetite. Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat. And a large chestnut, the delicious meat Which Jove himself, were he a mouse, would eat. And, for a liavt gout, there was mixt with these The swerd of bacon, and the coat of cheese : The precious reliques, which, at harvest, he Had gather'd from the reapers' luxury. 58 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Freely (said he) fall on, and never spare, The bounteous gods will for to-morrow care. And thus at ease, on beds of straw, they lay, And to their genius sacrific'd the day : Yet the nice guest's epicurean mind, (Though breeding made him civil seem, and kind) Despis'd this country feast ; and still his thought Upon the cakes and pies of London wrought. Your bounty and civility, (said he) Which I'm surpris'd in these rude parts to see. Shews that the gods have given you a mind Too noble for the fate, Avhich here you find. Why should a soul, so virtuous, and so great. Lose itself thus in an obscure retreat ? Let savage beasts lodge in a country den ; You should see towns, and manners know, and men ; And taste the generous luxury of the court. Where all the mice of quality resort ; "N^Tiere thousand beauteous shes about you move. And, by high fare, are pliant made to love. We all, ere long, must render up our breath ; No cave or hole can shelter us from death. Since life is so uncertain, and so short. Let's spend it all in feasting and in sport. Come, worthy sir, come with me, and partake All the great things, that mortals happy make. Alas ! what virtue hath sufficient arms, T'oppose bright honour, and soft pleasure's charms ? What wisdom can their magic force repel ? It draws this reverend hermit from his cell. It was the time, when witty poets tell, " That Phoebus into Thetis' bosom fell : She blush'd at first, and then put out the light. And drew the modest curtains of the night." OF AGRICULTURE. 59 Plainly the troth to tell, the sun was set. When to the town our wearied travellers get, To a lord's house, as lordly as can be, Made for the use of pride and luxury. They come ; the gentle courtier at the door Stops, and will hardly enter in before. But 'tis, sir, your command, and being so, I'm sworn t' obedience ; and so in they go. Behind a hanging in a spacious room, (The richest work of Mortclake's noble loom) They wait awhile their wearied limbs to rest, Till silence should invite them to their feast. " About the hour that Cynthia's silver light Had touch'd the pale meridies of the night," At last, the various supper being done. It happen'd that the company was gone Into a room remote, servants and all. To please their noble fancies with a ball. Our host leads forth his stranger, and does find All fitted to the bounties of his mind. Still on the table half-filFd dishes stood. And with delicious bits the floor was strew'd. The courteous mouse presents him with the best. And both with fat varieties are blest. Th' industrious peasant every where does range, And thanks the gods for his life's happy change. Lo ! in the midst of a well-freighted pie. They both at last glutted and wanton lie. When see the sad reverse of prosperous fate. And what fierce storms on mortal glories wait ! With hideous noise, down the rude servants come. Six dogs before run barking into th' room ; The wretched gluttons fly with wild affright, And hate the fulness which retards their flight. 6o COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Our trembling peasant wishes now in vain, That rocks and mountains cover'd him again. Oh how the change of his poor life he curst ! This, of all lives (said he) is sure the worst. Give me again, ye gods, my cave and wood ; With peace, let tares and acorns be my food. A PARAPHRASE UPON THE 10th EPISTLE OF THE rmST BOOK OF HORACE. HORACE TO FUSCUS ARISTIUS. ^EALTH, from the lover of the country, me. Health to the lover of the city, thee ; A difference in our souls, this only proves ; In all things else, we agree like married doves. But the warm nest and crowded dove-house thou Dost like ; I loosely fly from bough to bough, And rivers drink, and all the shining day. Upon fair trees or mossy rocks, I play ; In fine, I live and reign, when I retire From all that you equal with heaven admire. Like one at last from the priest's service fled. Loathing the honied cakes, I long for bread. "Would I a house for happiness erect, Nature alone should be the architect, She'd build it more convenient, than great. And, doubtless, in the country choose her seat. Is there a place, doth better helps supply, Against the wounds of winter's cruelty ? Is there an air, that gentlier does assuage The mad celestial dosf's, or lion's rase ? OF AGRICULTURE. Is it not there that sleep (and only there) Xor noise without, nor cares within, does fear ? Does art through pipes a purer water bring. Than that, which nature strains into a spring ? Can all your tap'stries, or your pictures, show More beauties, than in herbs and flowers do groi Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please. Even in the midst of gilded palaces. And in your towns, that prospect gives delight. Which opens round the country to our sight. Men to the good, from which they rashly fly, Return at last ; and their wild luxury Does but in vain with those true joys contend, Which nature did to mankind recommend. The man, who changes gold for burnish'd brass, Or small right gems for larger ones of glass. Is not, at length, more certain to be made Ridiculous, and wretched by the trade. Than he, who sells a solid good, to buy The painted goods of pride and vanity. If thou be wise, no glorious fortune choose, Which 'tis but pain to keep, yet grief to lose. For, when we place even trifles in the heart. With trifles too, unwillingly we part. An humble roof, plain bed, and homely board. More clear, untainted pleasures do afford, Than all the tumult of vain greatness brings To kinors, or to the favorites of kinors.'" '^ Pope has imitated this line, and has made it stronger, but more vulgar : — " Stuck o'er with titles and hung round with stings, That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings." Essay on Man, Ep. iv. 1. 206. 62 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. The horned deer, by nature arni'd so well, Did with the horse in common pasture dwell ; And, when they fought, the field it always wan, Till the ambitious horse begg'd help of man. And took the bridle, and thenceforth did reign Bravely alone, as lord of all the plain ; But never after could the rider get From olF his back, or from his mouth the bit. So they, who poverty too much do fear, T' avoid that weight, a greater burden bear ; That they might power above their equals have. To cruel masters they themselves enslave. For gold, their liberty exchanged we see. That fairest flower, which crowns humanity. And all this mischief does upon them light. Only because they know not how, aright. That great, but secret, happiness to prize, That 's laid up in a little, for the wise : That is the best and easiest estate. Which to a man sits close, but not too strait ; 'Tis like a shoe ; it pinches, and it burns, Too narrow ; and too large, it overturns. My dearest friend, stop thy desires at last. And chearfuUy enjoy the wealth thou hast. And, if me still seeking for more you see. Chide, and reproach, despise and laugh at me. Money was made, not to command our will. But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey ; The horse doth with the horseman run away. OF AGRICULTURE. 63 THE COUNTRY LIFE. Lib. IV. Plant ARUM. |LEST be the man (and blest he is) whom e'er (Plac'd far out of the roads of hope or fear) A little field, and little garden, feeds : The field gives all that frugal nature needs ; The wealthy garden liberally bestows All she can ask, when she luxurious grows. The specious inconveniences, that wait Upon a life of business, and of state, He sees (nor does the sight disturb his rest) By fools desir'd, by wicked men possest. Thus, thus (and this deserv'd great Virgil's praise) The old Corycian yeoman pass'd his days ; Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent : Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent To offer him a crown, with wonder found The reverend gard'ner hoeing of his ground ; Unwillingly and slow and discontent. From his lov'd cottage, to a throne he went. And oft he stopt in his triumphant way, And oft look'd back, and oft was heard to say, Not without sighs, Alas, I there forsake A happier kingdom than I go to take ! Thus Aglalis (a man unknown to men, But the gods knew, and therefore lov'd him then,) Thus liv'd obscurely then without a name, Aglaiis, now consign'd t' eternal fame. For Gyges, the rich king, wicked and great, Presum'd, at wise Apollo's Delphic seat 64 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Presum'd, to ask, Oh thou, the whole world's eye, See'st thou a man, that happier is than I ? The god, who scorn'd to flatter men, reply'd, Aglaiis happier is. But Gyges cry'd, In a proud rage, who can that Aglaiis be ? AVe have heard, as yet, of no such king as he. And true it was, through the whole earth around No king of such a name was to be found. Is some old hero of that name alive, Who his high race does from the gods derive ? Is it some mighty general, that has done Wonders in fight, and god-like honours won ? Is it some man of endless wealth, said he ? None, none of these. Who can this Aglaiis be ? After long search, and vain inquiries past. In an obscure Arcadian vale at last, (Th' Arcadian life has always shady been) Near Sopho's town (which he but once had seen) This Aglaiis, who monarchs' envy drew, Whose happiness the gods stood witness to. This mighty Aglaiis was labouring found. With his own hands, in his own little ground. So, gracious God, (if it may lawful be. Among those foolish gods to mention thee) So let me act, on such a private stage, The last dull scenes of my declining age ; After long toils and voyages in vain, This quiet port, let my tost vessel gain ; Of heavenly rest, this earnest to me lend. Let my life sleep, and learn to love her end. V. THE GARDEN. TO J. EVELYX, ESQ.' NEVER bad any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden,'^ with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and study of nature ; And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and intire to lie, In no ixnactive ease, and no unglorious poverty. ' John Evelyn, now most known as the author of the " Diary," but in Cowley's time more celebrated as the writer of " Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees ;" to him, therefore, this essay is very fitlv inscribed. 2' So also Swift,— I've often wished that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year, A handsome house to lodge a friend, A terrace at my garden's end. 66 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Or, as Virgil has said, shorter and better for me, that I might there " Studiis florere ignobilis oti;"^ (though I could wish that he had rather said, " Nobilis oti," when he spoke of his own.) But several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed me hitherto, and do still, of that felicity ; for though I have made the first and hardest step to it, by abandoning all ambitions and hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all business and almost company, yet I stick still in the inn of a hired house and garden, among weeds and rubbish : and without that pleasantest work of human industry, the improvement of something which we call (not very properly, but yet we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am not yet arrived at my little Zoar. O let me escape thither {is it not a little one .^) and my soul shall live. I do not look back yet ; but I have been forced to stop, and make too many halts. You may wonder. Sir, (for this seems a little too ex- travagant and pindarical for prose) what I mean by all this preface ; it is to let you know, that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with by the bye ; which is, that they have procured to me some part in your kindness and esteem ; and thereby the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended to posterity, by the epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful book that has been written in that kind, and which is to last as long as months and years.* ^ Virgil, Georg. iv. 564. Cowley gives the sense in the two lines above. * Evelyn had dedicated to Cowley his ^' Kalendarium Hor- OF THE GARDEN. 67 Among many other arts and excellencies, which you enjoy, I am glad to find this favourite of mine the most predominant ; that you choose this for your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts for your concubines ; though you know them, and beget sons upon them all (to which, you are rich enough to allow great legacies), yet, the issue of this seems to be designed by you to the main of the estate ; you have taken most pleasure in it, and bestowed most charges upon its education : and I doubt not to see that book, which you are pleased to promise to the world, and of which you have given us a large earnest in your calendar, as accomplished, as any thing can be expected from an extraordinary wit, and no ordinary expenses, and a long experience. I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden ; and, yet no man, who makes his happiness more public, by a free communication of the art and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to recommend to mankind the search of that felicity, which you instruct them how to find and to enjoy. 1. |APPY art thou, whom God does bless With the full choice of thine own happiness ; And happier yet, because thou'rt blest With prudence, how to choose the best ; In books and gardens, thou hast plac'd aright tense,'" and here Cowley returns his complimentary wishes, and adds, that Evelyn's " Calendar " will be as lasting as time itself. 68 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. (Things, which thou well dost understand ; And both, dost make with thy laborious hand) Thy noble, innocent delight : And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet Both pleasures more refin'd and sweet ; The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books. Oh, who would change these soft, yet solid joys, For empty shews, and senseless noise ; And all, which rank ambition breeds. Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such poi- sonous weeds ? 2. When God did man to his own likeness make. As much as clay, though of the purest kind. By the great potter's art refin'd, Could the divine impression take. He thought it fit to place him, where A kind of heaven too did appear. As far as earth could such a likeness bear : That man no happiness might want. Which earth to her first master could aflbrd. He did a garden for him plant By the quick hand of his omnipotent word. As the chief help and joy of human life. He gave him the first gift ; first, ev'n before a wife. 3. For God, the universal architect, 'T had been as easy to erect A Louvre or Escurial, or a tower. That might with heaven communication hold. As Babel vainly thought to do of old — OF THE GARDEN. 69 He wanted not the skill or power ; In the world's fabric those were shown, And, the materials were all his own. But well he knew, what place would best agree With innocence, and with felicity : And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain If any part of either yet remain, U any part of either we expect, This may our judgment in the search direct ; God the first garden made, and the first city Cain. 4. O blessed shades ! O gentle cool retreat From all th' immoderate heat, In which the frantic world does burn and sweat ! This does the lion-star, ambition's rage ; This avarice, the dog-star's thirst assuage ; Every where else their fatal power we see, They make and rule man's wretched destiny : They neither set, nor disappear, But tyrannize o'er all the year ; Whilst we ne'er feel their flame or influence here. The birds, that dance from bough to bough, And sing above in every tree, Are not from fears and cares more free, Than we, who lie, or sit, or walk below. And should by right be singers too. What prince's choir of music can excel That which within this shade does dwell ? To which we nothing pay or give ; They, like all other poets, live Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains ; 'Tis well, if they become not prey : The whistling winds add their less artful strains, 70 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. And a grave base the murmuring fountains play ; Nature does all this harmony bestow, — But to our plants, art's music too. The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe ; The lute itself, which once was green and mute, When Orpheus strook th' inspired lute, The trees danc'd round, and understood By sympathy the voice of wood. 5. These are the spells, that to kind sleep invite, And nothing does, within, resistance make. Which yet we moderately take ; Who would not choose to be awake, While he's encompast round with such delight. To th' ear, the nose, the touch, the taste, and sight ? When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep^ A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep. She od'rous herbs and flowers beneath him spread. As the most soft and sweetest bed ; Not her own lap would more have charm'd his head. "Who, that has reason, and his smell, AVould not among roses and jasmin dwell, Bather than all his spirits choke With exhalations of dirt and smoke ? And all th' uncleanness, which does drown In pestilential clouds a populous town ? The earth itself breathes better perfumes here, Than all the female men, or women, there, Not without cause, about them bear. 5 See Virgil, iEneid i. 695. OF THE GARDEN. 7 6. "When Epicurus to the world had taught, That pleasure was the chiefest good, (And was, perhaps, i' th' right, if rightly understood) His life he to his doctrine brought, And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure sought "Whoever a true epicure would be, May there find cheap and virtuous luxury. Yitellius's table, which did hold As many creatures as the ark of old ; That fiscal table, to which every day All countries did a constant tribute pay, Could nothing more delicious afibrd That nature's liberality, Help'd with a little art and industry, Allows the meanest gard'ner's board. The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose, For which the grape or melon she would lose ; Though all th' inhabitants of sea and air Be lifted in the glutton's bill of fare ; Yet still the fruits of earth we see Plac'd the third story ^ high in all her luxury. 7. But with no sense the garden does comply. None courts, or flatters, as it does the eye. When the great Hebrew king did almost strain The wond'rous treasures of his wealth and brain, ^ This is explained in this way: — Fruits form the dessert, and in Cowley's days were the third course in a feast ; fish, with flesh and fowl, forming the other two. 72 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. His royal southern guest to entertain ; Though she on silver floors did tread, With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread, To hide the metal's poverty ; Though she look'd up to roofs of gold, And nought around her could behold. But silk and rich embroidery. And Babylonian tapestry. And wealthy Hiram's princely dye ; Though Ophir's starry stones met every where her eye ; Though she herself and her gay host were drest With all the shining glories of the East ; When lavish art her costly work had done, The honour and the prize of bravery Was by the garden from the palace won ; And every rose and lily there did stand Better attir'd by nature's hand : The case thus judg'd against the king we see. By one, that would not be so rich, though wiser far than he. Nor does this happy place only dispense Such various pleasures to the sense ; Here health itself does live. That salt of life, which does to all a relish give. It's standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth. The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health. The tree of life, when it in Eden stood. Did its immortal head to heaven rear ; It lasted a tall cedai-, till the flood ; Now a small thorny shrub it does appear ; Nor will it thrive too every where : It always here is freshest seen ; 'Tis only here an evergreen. OF THE CARD EX. 73 If, through the strong and beauteous fence Of temperance and innocence, And wholesome labours, and a quiet mind, Any diseases passage find, They must not think here to assail A land unarmed, or without a guard ; They must fight for it, and dispute it hard. Before they can prevail : Scarce any plant is growing here, Which against death some weapon does not bear. Let cities boast, that they provide For life the ornaments of pride ; But 'tis the country and the field, That furnish it with staff and shield. 9. Where does the wisdom and the power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection shine ? Where do we finer strokes and colours see Of the Creator's real poetry, Than when we with attention look Upon the third day's volume of the book ? If we could open and intend our eye,- We all, like Moses, should espy Ev'n in a bush the radiant Deity. But we despise these his inferior ways (Though no less full of miracle and praise) : Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze ; The stars of earth no wonder in us raise, Though these perhaps do more, than they, The life of mankind sway. Although no part of mighty nature be ^Nlore stor'd with beauty, power, and mystery ; Yet, to encourage human industry, 74 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. God has so order'd, that no other part Such space and such dominion leaves for art. 10. We no where art do so triumphant see, As when it grafts or buds the tree : In other things we count it to excel, If it a docile scholar can appear To Nature, and but imitate her well ; It over-rules, and is her master here. It imitates her Maker's power divine, And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore To its blest state of Paradise before : Who would not joj to see his conquering hand O'er all the vegetable world command ? And the wild giants of the wood receive What law he's pleas'd to give ? He bids th' ill-natur'd crab produce The gentler apple's winy juice. The golden fruit, that worthy is Of Galatea's purple kiss : He does the savage hawthorn teach To bear the medlar and the pear ; He bids the rustic plum to rear A noble trunk, and be a peach. Even Daphne's coyness he does mock, And weds the cherry to her stock, Though she refus'd Apollo's suit ; Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, Now wonders at herself, to see That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit. OF THE CARD EX. 75 11- Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk In the Salonian garden's noble shade, Which by his own imperial hands was made : I see him smile (methinks) as he does talk With the ambassadors, who come in vain, T' entice him to a throne again. If I, my friends (said he), should to you show All the delights, which in these gardens grow, 'Tis likelier much, that you should with me stay, Than 'tis, that you should carry me away : And trust me not, my friends, if, every day, I walk not here with more delight Than ever, after the most happy fight. In triumph, to the capitol, I rod. To thank the gods, and to be thought, myself, almost a god. VI. OF GREATNESS. [INCE we cannot attain to greatness (says the Sieur de Montagne,) let us have our revenge by railing at it :"^ this he spoke but in jest. I believe he desired it no more than I do, and had less reason ; for he enjoyed so plentiful and honourable a fortune in a most excellent country, as allowed him all the real conveniences of it, separated and purged from the incommodities. If I were but in his condition, I should think it hard measure, without being convinced of any crime, to be sequestered from it, and made one of the principal officers of state. But the reader may think that what I now say is of small authority, because I never was, nor ever shall be, put to the trial : I can therefore only make my protestation. If ever I more riches did desire Than cleanliness and quiet do require : ' Montaigne, liv. iii. chap. 7. De V Incommodite de la Gran- deur. " Puisque nous ne la pouvons aveindre, vengeons nous h. en mesdire." He adds, " yet it is not truly to rail at any thing if we merely point out its faults." Cowley quotes from Florio's Montaigne, a translation which was a great favourite with Shakespeare. OF GREATNESS. 77 If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat, With any wish, so mean as to be great, Continue, heaven, still from me to remove The humble blessings of that life I love. I know very many men will despise, and some pity me, for this humour, as a poor-spirited fellow ; but I am content, and, like Horace, thank God for being so. Di bene fecerunt, inopis me quodque pusilli, Finxerunt animi.^ I confess, I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little chearful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and, if I were to. fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it) it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty. I would neither wish that my mistress, nor my fortune, should be a hoiia roba, nor, as Homer uses to describe his beau- ties, like a daughter of great Jupiter, for the stateliness and largeness of her person ; but, as Lucretius says, Parvula, pumilio, XapiTb)v fxia, tota merum sal.^ Where there is one man of this, I believe there are a thousand of Senecio's mind, whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur, Seneca'' the elder describes to this effect : Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and ^ Horace, Sat. i. iv. 17. "The gods have done well in making me a humble and small-spirited fellow." ^ Lucretius, bk. iv. v. 1155. The poet, who has used very freely Greek appellatives in ten verses of the context, here cie- scribes the mistress he should choose, a wee pet darling of a pigmy size. * Suasorium Liber, Suas. 11. 78 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants, but huge, massy fellows ; no plate or houshold stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion : you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into Such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet : he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears : he kept a concubine, that was a very giantess, and made her walk too always in chiopins, till, at last, he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which, Messala said, was not his cogJiomen, but his cognomentum : when he de- claimed for the three hundred Lacedaemonians, who alone opposed Xerxes's army of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his arms, and stood on tip- toes, that he might appear the taller, and cried out, in a very loud voice : " I rejoice, I rejoice " — We wondered, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his eminence. " Xerxes (says he) is all mine own. He, who took away the sight of the sea, with the canvas veils of so many ships " — and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the edition, or the orator's own burly way of nonsense. This is the character that Seneca gives of this hyper- bolical fop, whom we stand amazed at, and yet there are very few men who are not in some things, and to some degrees, Grandios. Is any thing more common, than to see our ladies of quality wear such high shoes as they cannot walk in, without one to lead them ; and a gown as long again as their body, so that they cannot stir to the next room, without a page or two to hold it OF GREATNESS. 79 up? I may safelj saj, that all the ostentation of our grandees is, just like a train, of no use in the world, but horribly cumbersome and incommodious. What is all this, but a spice of Grandio f how tedious would this be, if we were always bound to it ! I do believe there is no king, who would not rather be deposed, than endure, every day of his reign, all the ceremonies of his corona- tion. The mightiest princes are glad to fly often from these majestic pleasures (which is, methinks, no small dis- paragement to them) as it were for refuge, to the most contemptible divertisements, and meanest recreations, of the vulgar, nay, even of children. One of the most powerful and fortunate princes of the world,^ of late, could find out no delight so satisfactory, as the keeping of little singing birds, and hearing of them, and whistling to them. What did the emperors of the whole world ? If ever any men had the free and full enjoyment of all human greatness (nay that would not suffice, for they would be gods too), they certainly possessed it : and yet one of them, who styled himself lord and god of the earth, could not tell how to pass his whole day plea- santly, without spending constantly two or three hours in catching of flies, and killing them with a bodkin, as if his godship had been Beelzebub.^ One of his pre- decessors, Nero (who never put any bounds, nor met with any stop to his appetite), could divert himself with no pastime more agreeable, than to run about the streets all niijht in a disguise, and abuse the women, and afii'ont * Louis XIII. The Duke of Luynes, constable of France, is said to have gained the favour of this powerful prince by train- ing up singing birds for him. — Anon. ^ Beelzebub, signifies the LordofJiies.— Cowi.i:Y. 8o COWLEY'S ESSAYS. the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and somethnes to be beaten by them : this was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures. His chiefest in the dav was, to sing, and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage : he was prouder of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his fore- fathers were, of their triumphs over nations : he did not at his death complain that so mighty an emperor, and the last of all the Caesarian race of deities, should be brought to so shameful and miserable an end ; but only cried out, " Alas, what pity it is, that so excellent a musician should perish in this manner ! " His uncle Claudius spent half his time at playing at dice ; that was the main fruit of his sovereignty. I omit the mad- nesses of Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordid- ness of those of Tiberius. Would one think that Au- gustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of nature, should be so hard put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to be found playing at nuts and bounding-stones, with little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he took delight in, for their prating and their wantonness ? Was it for this, that Rome's best blood he spilt, With so much falsehood, so much guilt ? Was it for this, that his ambition strove To equal Caesar, first ; and after, Jove.' Greatness is barren, sure, of solid joys ; Her merchandize (I fear) is all in toj's: She could not else, sure, so uncivil be, To treat his universal majesty, His new-created Deity, With nuts and bounding-stones and boys. But we must excuse her for this meagre entertain- OF GREATNESS. 8i ment ; she has not really wherewithal to make such feasts as we imagine. Her guests must be contented sometimes with but slender cates, and with the same cold meats served over and over again, even till they become nauseous. When you have pared away all the vanity, what solid and natural contentment does there remain, which may not be had with five hundred pounds a year ? ISTot so many servants or horses ; but a few good ones, which will do all the business as well : not so many choice dishes at every meal ; but at several meals all of them, which makes them both the more healthy, and the more pleasant : not so rich garments, nor so frequent changes ; but as warm and as comely, and so frequent change too, as is every jot as good for the master, though not for the taylor or valet de chambre : not such a stately palace, nor gilt rooms, or the costliest sorts of tapestry ; but a convenient brick house, with decent wainscot, and pretty forest^work hangings. Lastly, (for I omit all other particulars, and will end with that which I love most in both conditions) not whole woods cut in walks, nor vast parks, nor fountain or cascade gardens ; but herb, and flower, and fruit gardens, which are more useful, and the water every whit as clear and wholesome as if it darted from the breasts of a marble nymph, or the urn of a river-god. If, for all this, you like better the substance of that former estate of life, do but consider the inseparable accidents of both : servitude, disquiet, danger, and, most commonly, guilt, inherent in the one ; in the other, liberty, tranquility, security, and innocence. And when you have thought upon this, you will confess that to be a truth which appeared to you, before, but a ridiculous paradox, that a low fortune is better guarded and attended than a high one. If, indeed, we look only G g2 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. upon the flourishing head of the tree, it appears a most beautiful object, " — sed quantum vertice ad auras "-^therias, tantum radice in Tartara teudit.'^'' As far as up towards heaven the branches grow, So far the roots sink down to hell below. Another horrible disgrace to greatness is, that It is for the most part in pitiful want and distress. What a wonderful thing is this ! Unless it degenerate into avarice, and so cease to be greatness, it falls perpetually into such necessities, as drive it into all the meanest and most sordid ways of borrowing, cousenage, and robbery : Mancipiis locuples, eget teris Cappadocum rex.^ This is the case of almost all great men, as well as of the poor king of Cappadocia : they abound with slaves, but are indigent of money. The ancient Roman em- perors, who had the riches of the whole world for their revenue, had wherewithal to live (one would have thought) pretty well at ease, and to have been exempt from the pressures of extreme poverty. But, yet with most of them it was much otherwise ; and they fell per- petually into such miserable penury, that they were forced to devour or squeeze most of their friends and servants, to cheat with infamous projects, to ransack and pillage all their provinces. This fashion of imperial grandeur is imitated by all inferior and subordinate sorts of it, as if it were a point of honour. They must be cheated of a third part of their estates ; two other thirds they must expend in vanity 5 so that they remain ' Virg. Georg. ii. 291. « Hor. Ep. i. vi. 39. OF GREATNESS. 83 debtors for all the necessary provisions of life, and have no way to satisfy those debts, but out of the succours and supplies of rapine : as riches increase (says Solomon), so do the mouths that devour themP The master mouth has no more than before. The owner, methinks, is like Ocnus in the fable, who is perpetually winding a rope of hay, and an ass at the end perpetually eating it. Out of these inconveniences arises naturally one more, which is, that no greatness can be satisfied or contented with itself: still, if it could mount up a little higher, it would be happy ; if it could gain but that point, it would obtain all it's desires ; but yet at last, when it is got up to the very top of the Peak of TenerifFe, it is in very great danger of breaking its neck downwards, but in no possibility of ascending upwards into the seat of tran- quillity above the moon. The first ambitious men in the world, the old giants, are said to have made an heroical attempt of scaling heaven in despight of the Gods ; and they cast Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa : two or three mountains more, they thought, would have done their business ; but the thunder spoilt all the work, when they were come up to the third storey : And what a noble plot was crost ! And what a brave design was lost ! A famous person of their ofF-spring, the late giant of our nation, when, from the condition of a very incon- siderable captain, he made himself lieutenant general of an army of little Titans, which was his first mountain, and afterwards general, which was his second, and after that, absolute tyrant of three kingdoms, which was the third, and almost touched the heaven which he afiected, 9 Ecel. V. 11. 84 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. is believed to have died with grief and discontent, be- cause he could not attain to the honest name of a king, and the old formality of a crown, though he had before exceeded the power by a wicked usurpation. If he could have compassed that, he would perhaps have wanted something else that is necessary to felicity, and pined away for the want of the title of an emperor or a god. The reason of this is, that greatness has no reality in nature, but is a creature of the fancy, a notion that consists only in relation and comparison : it is indeed an idol ; but St. Paul teaches us, thai an idol is worth nothing in the icorld. There is, in truth, no rising or meridian of the sun, but only in respect to several places : there is no right or left, no upper-hand, in nature ; every thing is little, and every thing is great, according as it is diversly compared. There may be per- haps some village in Scotland or Ireland, where I might be a great man ; and in that case I should be like Csesar (you would wonder how Caesar and I should be like one another in any thing) ; and choose rather to be the first man of the village, than second at Rome. Our country is called Great Britany, in regard only of a lesser of the same name ; it would be but a ridiculous epithet for it, when we consider it together with the kingdom of China. That, too,^° is but a pitiful rood of ground, in comparison of the whole earth besides : and this whole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but one point or atom in relation to those numberless worlds that are scattered up and down in the infinite space of the sky which we behold. '" This noble idea is pursued to a greater extent by M. Pascal, Pensees, c. xxii. ; and by Mr. Addison, in the Spectator, Ko. 420 and No. 565. OF GREATNESS. 85 The other many inconveniences of grandeur I have spoken of dispersedly in several chapters ; and shall end this with an ode of Horace, not exactly copied, but rudely imitated. HORACE, LIB. III. ODE I. " Odi profanum vulgus," &c. 1. jENCE, ye profane ; I hate ye all ; Both the great vulgar, ^^ and the small. To virgin minds, which yet their native white- ness hold, Not yet discolour'd with the love of gold, (That jaundice of the soul. Which makes it look so gilded and so foul,) To you, ye very few, these truths I tell ; The muse inspires my song ; hark, and observe it well. We look on men, and wonder at such odds 'Twixt things that were the same by birth ; We look on kings as giants of the earth, These giants are but pigmies to the gods. The humblest bush and proudest oak Are but of equal proof against the thunder-stroke. " This happy expression of " the great vulgar " is become a part of the English phraseology. 86 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Beauty, and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power,^^ Have their short flourishing hour ; And love to see themselves, and smile, And joy in their pre-eminence a while; Even so in the same land. Poor weeds, rich corn, gay flowers, together stand ; Alas, death mows down all with an impartial hand. And all ye men, whom greatness does so please, Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles : If ye your eyes could upwards move, (But ye, I fear, think nothing is above) Ye would perceive by what a little thread The sword still hangs over your head. ISTo tide of wine would drown your cares ; No mirth or musick over-noise your fears. The fear of death would you so watchful keep, As not t'admit the image of it, sleep. 4. Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces. And yet so humble too, as not to scorn The meanest country cottages ; " His poppy grows among the corn." The halcyon sleep will never build his nest In any stormy breast. '2 This line is like, both in expression and sentiment, to that fine stanza in Mr. Gray's Elegy : — " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour ; The paths of glory lead but to the grave." OF GREATNESS. 87 'Tis not enough that he dpes find Clouds and darkness in their mind; Darkness but half his work will do ; 'Tis not enough ; he must find quiet too. 5. The man, who, in all wishes he does make, Does only nature's counsel take, That wise and happy man will never fear The evil aspects of the year ; Xor tremble, though two comets should appeal . He does not look in almanacks, to see Whether he fortunate shall be ; Let Mars and Saturn in the heavens conjoin,^^ And what they please against the world design, So Jupiter within him shine. ^^ 6. If of your pleasures and desires no end be found, God to your cares and fears will set no bound. AVhat would content you ? who can tell ? Ye fear so much to lose what ye have got, As if ye lik'd it Avell : Ye strive for more, as if ye lik'd it not. Go, level hills, and fill up seas, Spare nought that may your wanton fancy please ; But, trust me, when ye have done all this. Much will be missing still, and much will be amiss. '^ i.e. Let Malice and Misfortune do their worst. '* i.e. So God send him a moderate and contented mind. VII. OF AVARICE. HERE are two sorts of avarice : the one is but of a bastard kind, and that is, the rapa- cious appetite of gain ; not for its own sake, but for the pleasure of refunding it immedi- ately through all the channels of pride and luxury : the other is the true kind, and properly so called ; which is a restless and unsatiable desire of riches, not for any farther end or use, but only to hoard, and preserve, and perpetually increase them. The covetous man, of the first kind, is like a greedy ostrich, which devours any metal ; but it is with an intent to feed upon it, and in effect it makes a shift to digest and excern it. The second is like the foolish chough, which loves to steal money only to hide it. The first does much harm to mankind ; and a little good too, to some few : the second does good to none ; no, not to himself. The first can make no excuse to God, or angels, or rational men, for his actions : the second can give no reason or colour, not to the devil himself, for what he does ; he is a slave to Mammon, Av^rithout wages. The first makes a shift to be be- loved ; ay, and envied, too, by some people : the second is the universal object of hatred and contempt. There is no vice has been so pelted with good sentences, and OF AVARICE. 89 especially by the poets, who have pursued It with stories and fables, and allegories, and allusions ; and moved, as we say, every stone to lling at it : among all which, I do not remember a more fine and gentleman -like cor- rection than that which was given it by one line of Ovid : " Desunt luxuriae multa, avaritiae omnia." Much is wanting to luxury, all to avarice. To which saying, I have a mind to add one member, and tender it thus ; Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things. Somebody says ^ of a virtuous and wise man, " that having nothing, he has all :" this is just his antipode, vv-ho, havmg all things, yet has nothing. He is a guar- dian eunuch to his beloved gold : " audivi eos amatores esse maximos, sed nil potesse." They are the fondest lovers, but impotent to enjoy. And, oh, what man's condition can be worse Than his, whom plenty starves, and blessings curse ; The beggars but a common fate deplore, The rich poor man's emphatically poor. I wonder how it comes to pass, that there has never been any law made against him : against him, do I say ? I mean, for him : as there are public provisions made for all other mad-men : it is very reasonable that the king should appoint some persons (and I think the courtiers would not be against this proposition) to manage his estate during his life (for his heirs commonly need not ^ The author, knowing the taste of his readers, would not disgust their delicacy by letting them know that this somebody v.-as St. Paul (2 Cor vi". 10), though the sense and expression would have done honour to Plato. 90 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. that care) ; and out of it to make it their business to see, that he should not Avant alimony befitting his condition, which he could never get out of his own cruel fingers. We relieve idle vagrants, and counterfeit beggars ; but have no care at all of these really poor men, who are (methinks) to be respectfully treated, in regard of their quality. I might be endless against them, but I am almost choakedwith the super-abundance of the matter; too much plenty impoverishes me, as it does them.^ I will conclude this odious subject with part of Horace's first satire, which take in his own familiar style:** S ADMIRE, Mascenas, how it comes to pass, ^ That no man ever yet contented was, Nor is, nor perhaps will be, with that state In which his own choice plants him, or his fate. Happy the merchant! the old soldier cries. The merchant, beaten with tempestuous skies, Happy the soldier! one half-hour to thee Gives speedy death, or glorious victory. The lawyer, knockt up early from his rest By restless clients, calls the peasant blest ; The peasant, when his labours ill succeed. Envies the mouth, which only talk does feed. 'Tis not (I think you'll say) that I want store ' This application of his aphorism covers the false wit of the expression, and was intended as an indirect apology for it, though the witticism be not his own, but Ovid's : — " inopem me copia fecit." — Met. iii. 466. ^ Mr. Cowley has succeeded better in copying this familiar style than most others; but he sometimes mistakes vulgar, or careless, at least, for familiar. Horace's familiarity is that of a perfectly polite and elegant speaker, as well as of an easy, well- bred man. OF AVARICE. 91 Of instances, if here I add no more; They are enough to reach at least a mile Beyond long orator Fabius's style. But, hold, ye, whom no fortune e'er endears, Gentlemen, malecontents, and mutineers, Who bounteous Jove so often cruel call. Behold, Jove's now resolv'd to please you all. Thou, soldier, be a merchant ; merchant, thou A soldier be; and, lawyer, to the plow. Change all your stations strait : why do they stay ? The devil a man will change, now, when he may. Were I in general Jove's abused case, By Jove I'd cudgel this rebellious race : But he's too good; be all then, as ye were: However, make the best of what ye are, And in that state be chearful and rejoice, "Which either was your fate, or was your choice : No, they must labour yet, and sweat and toil, And very miserable be a while. But 'tis with a design only to gain What may their age with plenteous ease maintain. The prudent pismire does this lesson teach. And industry to lazy mankind preach. The little drudge does trot about and sweat, Nor does he strait devour all he can get; But in his temperate mouth carries it home A stock for winter, which he knows must come. And, when the rowling world to creatures here Turns up the deform'd wrong side of the year. And shuts him in, with storms, and cold, and wet, He chearfully does his past labours eat: O, does he so? your wise example, th' ant, Does not, at all times, rest and plenty want. But, weighing justly a mortal ant's condition. 92 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Divides his life 'twixt labour and fruition. Thee, neither heat, nor storms, nor wet, nor cold, From thy unnatural diligence can withhold : To th' Indies thou would'st run, rather than see Another, though a friend, richer than thee. Fond man ! what good or beauty can be found In heaps of treasure, buried under ground? Which rather than diminish'd e'er to see. Thou would'st thyself, too, buried with them be : And what's the difference? is't not quite as bad Never to use, as never to have had ? In thy vast barns millions of quarters store ; Thy belly, for all that, will hold no more Than mine does. Every baker makes much bread: "VVliat then ? He's with no more, than others, fed. Do you within the bounds of nature live. And to augment your own you need not strive ; One hundred acres will no less for you Your life's whole business, than ten thousand, do. But pleasant 'tis to take from a great store; What, man ? though you're resolv'd to take no more Than I do from a small one ? If your will Be but a pitcher or a pot to fill. To some great river for it must you go, When a clear spring just at your feet does flow? Give me the spring, which does to human use Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce ; He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile, Must run the danger of the crocodile. And of the rapid stream itself, which may, At unawares, bear him perhaps away. In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin Wash'd o'er in vain, for ever dry within; He catches at the stream with greedy lips, OF AVARICE. 93 From liis touclit mouth the wanton torment slips : * You laugh now, and expand your careful brow ; 'Tis finely said, but what's all this to you? Change but the name, this fable is thy stores, Thou in a flood of useless wealth dost glory, Which thou canst only touch, but never taste ; Th' abundance still, and still the want, does last. The treasures of the gods thou would'st not spare : But, when they're made thine own, they sacred are. And must be kept with reverence ; as if thou No other use of precious gold didst know, But that of curious pictures, to delight With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight. The only true and genuine use is this. To buy the things, which nature cannot miss Without discomfort ; oil, and vital bread, And wine, by which the life of life is fed, And all those few things else by which we live. All that remains, is giv'n for thee to give; If cares and troubles, envy, grief, and fear, The bitter fruits be, which fair riches bear; If a new poverty grow out of store ; The old plain way, ye gods ! let me be poor. ■* Prettily expressed in Ovid's manner ; but that is not the manner of Horace, who says elegantly but simply, — " fugientia captat Flumina .'' -% 94 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. PARAPHRASE ON HORACE, B. HI. OD. XVI. (^Inclusam Dana'en turris ahenea^ Sfc.) TOWER of brass, one would have said. And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, And guards, as strict as in the heat of wars. Might have at least preserv'd one innocent maid. The jealous father thought, he well might spare All further jealous care; And, as he walk'd, t'himself alone he smil'd. To think how Venus' arts he had beguil'd ; And, when he slept, his rest was deep. But Venus laugh'd to see and hear him sleep. She taught the amorous Jove A magical receipt in love, Which arm'd him stronger, and which help'd him more. Than all his thunder did, and his almighty -ship before. 2. She taught him love's elixir, by which art His godhead into gold he did convert : No guards did then his passage stay. He pass'd with ease ; gold was the word ; Subtle, as lightning, bright and quick and fierce. Gold through doors and walls did pierce. The prudent Macedonian king, To blow up towns, a golden mine did spring. He broke through gates with this petar, 'Tis the great art of peace, the engine 'tis of war ; And fleets and armies follow it afar : The ensign 'tis at land, and 'tis the seaman's star. ON AVARICE. 95 Let all the world slave to this tyrant be, Creature to this disguised deity, Yet it shall never conquer me. A guard of virtues will not let it pass. And wisdom is a tower of stronger brass. The Muse's laurel,'^ round my temples spread, Does from this lightning's force secure my head. Xor will I lift it up so high. As in the violent meteor's way to lie.° Wealth for its power do we honour and adore ? The things we hate, ill fate, and death, have more. 4. From towns and courts, camps of the rich and great, The vast Xerxean army, I retreat. And to the small Laconic forces fly,''' Which hold the straights of poverty. ^ A very poetical manner of expressing that plain senti- ment, — " vatis avarus Non temere est animus " Hor. Ep. II. i. 119. The common superstition makes the laurel a preservative against lightning. ^ All this imagery is extracted out of a fine, indeed, but simple enough verse of the original, — " jure perhorrui Late conspicuum tollere verticem." ' A forced unnatural allusion, for the sake of introducing a quibble. The straights of poverty — the word straights meaning a narrow pass like that of Thermopylag, which the small Laconic forces guarded against the vast Xerxean army, and distresses or difficulties, such as men are put to ■when they have to contend with poverty. 96 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Cellars and granaries in vain we fill, With all the summer's store, If the mind thirst and hunger still: The poor rich man's emphatically poor.*' Slave to the things we too much prize, We masters grow of all that we despise. 5. A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood, Is all the wealth by nature understood. The monarch, on whom fertile Nile bestows All which that grateful earth can bear. Deceives himself, if he suppose That more than this falls to his share. Whatever an estate does beyond this aiford, Is not a rent paid to the lord ; But is a tax illegal and unjust, Exacted from it by the tyrant lust. Much will always wanting be, To him who much desires. Thrice happy he To whom the wise indulgency of heaven. With sparing hand, but just enough has given. ^ This line occurs before, on p. 89. It seems to have been a | favourite with the poet, as it is, indeed, a very fine one. DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN VIII. THE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN IN MUCH COlMPANY.i |F twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to resist the assaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I see little possibility for one honest man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves, who are all furnished cap dpiiy with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offensive, too, of craft and malice. He will find no less odds than this against him, if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice therefore which I can give him is, to be sure not to venture his person any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to stop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy. The truth of it is, that a man in much business must ' *' The pure virtue of Cowley, clouded by chagrin, and, perhaps, a constitutional melancholy, could scarce fail of taking somewhat too much of the character of a misanthrope ; yet hi? good sense and good temper generally kept him from any ex- travagance in the expression of it, except in this chapter." — So far Hurd. Any one who knows the baser part of mankind will not think Cowley at all extravagant. H 98 CO IV LEY'S ESSAYS. either make himself a knave, or else the world will make him a fool: and, if the injury went no farther than the being laughed at, a wise man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation ; but the case is much worse, for these civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about such a taken stranger,^ but at last devour him. A sober man cannot get too soon out of drunken company, though they be never so kind and merry among themselves ; it is not unj^jleasant only, but dangerous to him. Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love to be alone ? It is hard for him to be otherwise ; he is so, when he is among ten thousand : neither is the solitude so uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts ; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilcst, methinks, of all nations, are those, whom we account the most barbarous ; there is some moderation and good- nature in the Toupinambaltians. who eat no men but their enemies, whilst we learned and polite and Chris- tian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks, prey upon everything that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed, united them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I wish, they could un- ravel all they had woven ; that we might have our woods and our innocence again, instead of our castles and our policies. They have assembled many thousands of scat- 2 Taken in the double sense cf seized and circumvented, that is, surprised by force or fraud. Cupius, in Latin, has the same ambiguity. DAXGERS OF AN HOXEST MAX. 99 tered people into one body : it is true, they have done so; they have brought them into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder one another : they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures ; they have made them hunters and fishers of their brethren ; they boast to have reduced them to a state of peace, when the truth is, they have only taught them an art of war ; they have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the restraint of vice, but they raised first that devil, which now they conjure and cannot bind ; though there were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there was less com- mitted, because there were no rewards for it. But the men, who praise philosophy from this topic, are much deceived ; let oratory answer for itself, the tinkling perhaps of that may unite a swarm : it never was the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them, when they were as- sembled ; to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as is possible, to unity again. Avarice and am- bition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire ; they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest ice be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth:* What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world ? what was it, but a concourse of thieves, and a sanctuary of criminals? It was justly named by the augury of no less than twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood of his brother. Not unlike to this was the beginning even of the first town too in the world, and such is the original sin of most cities : their actual increase daily with their age and growth : the more people, the more wicked all of them ; ^ Geu. xi. 4. 1 oo CO WLEY' S ESS A VS. every one brings in his part to inflame the contagion, which becomes at last so universal and so strong, that DO precepts can be sufficient preservatives, nor any thing secure our safety, but flight from among the infected. We ought, in the choice of a situation, to regard, above all things, the healthfulness of the place, and the healthfulness of it for the mind, rather than for the body. But suppose (which is hardly to be sup- posed) we had antidote enough against this poison ; nay, suppose further, we were always and at all pieces armed and provided, both against the assaults of hos- tility, and the mines of treachery, it will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in alarms ; though we were compassed round with fire, to defend ourselves from wild beasts, the lodging would be unpleasant, be- cause we must always be obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less the defects of our guard, than the dili- gences of our enemy. The sum of this is, that a virtuous man is in danger to be trod upon and destroyed in the crowd of his contraries, nay, which is worse, to be changed and corrupted by them ; and that it is impos- sible to escape both these inconveniences without so much caution, as will take away the whole quiet, that is, the happiness, of his life. Ye see, then, what he may lose ; but, I pray, what can he get there ? Quid Eomse faciam? Mentiri nescio.* What should a man of truth and honesty do at Rome ? He can neither understand nor speak the language of the place ; a naked man may swim in the sea, but it is not the way to catch fish there ; they are likelier to * Juv. Sat. iii. 41. DANGERS OF AX HONEST MAN. loi devour him, than he them, if he bring no nets, and use no deceits. I think, therefore, it was wise and friendly advice, which Martial gave to Fabian,'^ when he met him newly arrived at Rome : Honest and poor, faithful in word and thought ; What has thee, Fabian, to the city brought? Thou neither the bufFoou nor bawd canst play, Nor with false whispers th' innocent betray ; Xor corrupt wives, nor from rich beldams get A living by thy industry and sweat ; Xor with vain promises and projects cheat, Xor bribe or flatter any of the great. But you're a man of learning, prudent, just; A man of courage, firm, and fit for trust. Why you may stay, and live unenvied here; But (faith) go back, and keep you where you were. Nay, if nothing of all this were in the case, yet the very sight of uncleanness is loathsome to the cleanly ; the sight of folly and impiety, vexatious to the wise and pious- Lucretius,*" by his favour, though a good poet, was but an ill-natured man, when he said, it was delight- ful to see other men in a great storm : and no less ill- natured should I think Democritus, who laughed at all the world, but that he retired himself so much out of it, that we may perceive he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much delighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses, which upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned, not only melancholy, but even sick with the sight. My compas- sion there was perhaps too tender, for I meet a thousand madmen abroad, without any perturbation ; though, t^ ^ Mart. iv. Ep. 5. ^ Lucretius, lib. ii. 102 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. weigh the matter justly, the total loss of reason is less deplorable than the total depravation of it. An exact judge of human blessings, of riches, honours, beauty, even of wit itself, should pity the abuse of them, more than the want. Briefly, though a wise man could pass never so securely through the great roads of human life, yet he will meet perpetually with so many objects and occa- sions of compassion, grief, shame, anger, hatred, indigna- tion, and all passions but envy (for he will find nothing to deserve that), that he had better strike into some private path ; nay, go so far, if he could, out of the common way, " ut nee facta audiat Pelopidarum ;'' that he might not so much as hear of the actions of the sons of Adam. But, whither shall we fly then ? into the deserts like the antient Hermits ? — Qua terra patet, fera regnat Erinnys, In facinus jurasse putes.'^ One would think that all mankind had bound them- selves by an oath to do all the wickedness they can ; that they had all (as the Scripture speaks) sold themselves to sin : the difference only is, that some are a little more crafty (and but a little, God knows), in making of the bargain. I thought, when I went first to dwell in the country, that, without doubt, I should have met there with the simplicity of the old poetical golden age ; I thought to have found no inhabitants there, but such as the shepherds of Sir Philip Sydney in Arcadia, or of Monsieur d'Urfe upon the banks of Lignon ; and began to consider with myself, which way I might recommend no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the 7 Ovid, Metara. i. 241. DANGERS OF AN HONEST 3IAN. 103 men of Chertsea : but, to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, bv infallible demonstrations, that I was still in Old England, and not in Arcadia, or La Forrest ; that, if I could not content myself with any thing less than exact fidelity in human conversation, I had almost as good go back and seek for it in the Court, or the Exchange, or Westminster-hall. I ask again then, whither shall we fly, or what shall we do ? The world may so come in a man's way, that he cannot choose but salute it ; he must take heed, though, not to go a whoring after it. If, by any lawful vocation, or just necessity, men happen to be married to it, I can only give thera St. Paul's advice : Brethren, the time is short ; it remains, that ther/, that have wives, be as though they had none. — But I iL'ould that all men were even as I myself.^ In all cases, they must be sure, that they do mundum ducere, and not mundo nuhere. They must retain the superiority and headship over it ; happy are they, who can get out of the sight of this deceitful beauty, that they may not be led so much as into temptation ; who have not only quitted the metropolis, but can abstain from ever seeing the next market town of their country. CLAUDIAX'S OLD :\L\X OF VEROXA. De sene Yeronensi, qui suburbium nunquam escressus est. K^p^^ELIX, qui patriis revum transegit in agris ; H ng^J Ipsa domus puerum quera videt, ipsa senem : Qui baculo nitens, in qua reptavit arena, 8 1 Cor. vii. 29. I04 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. Unius numeret secula longa casae. Ilium non vario traxit fortuna tumultu, Nee bibit ignotas mobilis hospes aquas. Non freta mercata tremuit, non classica miles : Non rauci lites pertulit ille fori. Indocilis rerum, vicinae nescius urbis Adspectu fruitur liberiore poli, Frugibus, alternis, non Consule, computat annum : Autumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat. Idem condit ager Soles, idemque reducit, Metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem. Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum, ^quaevumque videt consenuisse nemus. Proxima cui nigris Verona remotior Indis, Benacumque putat litora rubra lacum. Sed tamen indomitas vires, firmisque lacertis iEtas robustum tertia cernit aevum. Erret, et extremes alter scrutetur Iberos ; Plus babet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae." Happy the man, who his whole time doth bound Within th' inclosure of his little ground. Happy the man, whom the same humble place (Th' hereditary cottage of his race) From his first rising infancy has known, And by degrees sees gently bending down, With natural propension, to that earth Which both preserv'd his life, and gave him birth. Him no false distant lights, by fortune set, Could ever into foolish wand'rings get. He never dangers either saw, or fear'd : The dreadful storms at sea he never heard. He never heard the shrill alarms of war, Or the worse noises of the lawyers' bar. DAXGERS OF AX IIOXEST MAX. 105 No change of consuls marks to him the year, The change of seasons is his calendar. The cold and heat, winter and summer shows ; Autumn by fruits, and spring by flowers he knows, He measures time by land-marks, and has found For the whole day the dial of his ground. A neighbouring wood, born with himself, he sees, And loves his old contemporary trees. He has only heard of near Verona's name. And knows it, like the Indies, but by fame. Does with a like concernment notice take Of the Red-sea, and of Benacus' lake. Thus health and strength he to a third age enjoys. And sees a long posterity of boys. About the spacious world let others roam. The voyage, life, is longest made at home. [o6 COWLEY^'S ESSAYS. IX. THE SHOETNESS OF LIFE, AND LWCEETAINTY OF EICHES. jF you sliould see a man, who were to cross from Dover to Calais, run about very busy and solicitous, and trouble himself many weeks before in making provisions for his voyage, Avould you commend him for a cautious and discreet person, or laugh at him for a timorous and im- pertinent coxcomb ? A man, who is excessive in his pains and diligence, and who consumes the greatest part of his time in furnishing the remainder with all conve- niences and even superfluities, is to angels and wise men no less ridiculous ; he does as little consider the short- ness of his passage, that he might proportion his cares accordingly. It is, alas, so narrow a str eight betwixt. the womb and the grave, that it might be called the Pas de Vie^ as well as that the Pas cle Calais. We are all tc^i^i^iipoL^ (as Pindar calls us,) creatures of a day, and therefore our Saviour bounds our desires to that little space ; as if it were very probable that every day should be our last, we are taught to demand even bread for no longer a time. The sun ought not to set upon our covetousuess, no more than upon our anger ; THE SHORTXESS OF LIFE. icy but, as to God Almighty a thousand years are as one day, so, in direct opposition, one day to the covetous man is as a thousand years; "tarn brevi fortis jaculatur ffivo multa," so far he shoots beyond his butt : one would think, he were of the opinion of the Millenaries, and hoped for so long a reign upon earth. The patriarchs before the flood, who enjoyed almost such a life, made, we are sure, less stores tor the maintaining of it ; they, who lived nine hundred years, scarcely provided for a few days ; we, who live but a few days, provide at least for nine hundred years. What a strange alteration is this of human life and manners ! and yet we see an imi- tation of it in every man's particular experience ; for we begin not the cares of life, till it be half spent, and still increase them, as that decreases. What is there among the actions of beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason ? AVhen they do any thing, which seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a natural instinct : and are not we fools, too, by the same kind of instinct ? If we could but learn to number our days (as we are taught to pray that we might), we should adjust much better our other ac- counts ; but, whilst we never consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be without end, too. Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words, — Spatio brevi Spera longam reseces — ^ from a short life cut off all hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away, like suckers, that choak the * Carm. l. xi. 6. io8 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit. And in another place, to the same sense, Vitae summa bi'evis spem nos vetat inclioare longam ;2 which Seneca does not mend when he says, "Oh! (quanta dementia est spes longas inchoantium ! " but he gives an example there of an acquaintance of his, named Senecio, who, from a very mean beginning, by great industry in turning about of money through all ways of gain, had attained to extraordinary riches, but died on a sudden after having supped merrily, "In ipso actu bene ceden- tiuni rerum, in ipso procurrentis fortunas impetu," in the full course of his good fortune, when she had a high tide, and a stiff gale, and all her sails on ; upon which occasion he cries, out of Virgil,'^ "Infere nunc, Melib^ee, pyros; poiie ordine vites!" Go, Meliboeus, now, Go graflF thy orchards, and thy vineyards plant; Behold theVruit ! For this Senecio I have no compassion, because he was taken, as we say, in ipso facto, still labouring in the work of avarice ; but the poor rich man in St. Luke (whose case was not like this) I could pity, methink^, if the Scripture would permit me ; for he seems to have been satisfied at last, he confesses he had enough for many years, he bids his soul take its ease ; and yet, for all that, God says to him. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee ; and the things thou hast laid up, who shall they belong to?* Where shall we find the causes of this bitter reproach and terrible judgment ? We may - Hor. Cann. i. iv. 15. ^ Buc. i. 74. "* Luke xii. 20. THE SHORTXESS OF LIFE. 109 find, I think, two ; and God, perhaps, saw more. First, that he did not intend true rest to his soul, but only to change the employments of it from avarice to luxury ; his design is, to eat and to drink, and to be merry. Secondly, that he went on too long before he thought of resting; the fulness of his old barns had not sufficed him, he would stay till he was forced to build new ones ; and God meted out to him in the same measure ; since he would have more riches than his life could contain, God destroyed his life, and gave the fruits of it to another. Thus God takes away sometimes the man from his riches, and no less frequently riches from the man : what hope can there be of such a marriage, where both parties are so fickle and uncertain ? by what bonds can such a couple be kept long together ? 1. jHY dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit. Or, what is worse, be left by it ? ^Vhy dost thou load thyself, when thou'rt to fly, Oh man, ordain'd to die ? "Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, Thou who art under ground to lie ? Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see, For death, alas ! is sowing thee.^ ^ An apostolic idea, (see 1 Cor. xv. 44), i.e. death sous the animal body, that a spiritual may spring up from it. no COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 3. Suppose, thou fortune could'st to tameness bring, And clip or pinion her wing; Suppose, thou coukl'st on fate so far prevail, As not to cut off thj entail ; 4. Yet death at all that subtilty will laugh. Death will that foolish gard'ner mock, "Who does a slight and annual plant engraff, Upon a lasting stock. o. Thou dost thyself wise and industrious deem; A mighty husband thou would'st seem ; Fond man ! like a bought slave, thou all the while Dost but for others sweat and toil. 6. Officious fool ! that needs must meddling be In business, that concerns not thee ! For when to future years thou extend'st thy cares, Thou deal'st in other men's affairs.^ 7. Even aged men, as if they truly were Children again, for age prepare; Provisions for long travel they design, In the last point of their short line. ^ Properly so, and still more inexcusably than the meddling bankrupt in Horace : — " — aliena negotia euro Excussus propriis." — Sat. ii. ill. 19. THE SHORTXESS OF LIFE. 8. "Wisely the ant against poor winter boards The stock, which summer's wealth affords : In grasshoppers, that must at autumn die, How vain were such an industry ! 9. Of power and honour the deceitful light Might half excuse our cheated sight, If it of life the whole small time would stay, And be our sun-shine all the day; 10. Like lightning, that, begot but in a cloud, (Though shining bright, and speaking loud) "Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race, And where it gilds, it wounds the place. 11. Oh, scene of fortune, which dost fair appear. Only to men that stand not near ! Proud poverty, that tinsel bravery wears ! And, like a rainbow, painted tears ! 12. Be prudent, and the shore in prospect keep, In a weak boat trust not the deep. Plac'd beneath envy, above envying rise ; Pity great men, great things despise. 13. The wise example of the heavenly lark, Thy fellow-poet, Cowley, mark ; Above the clouds, let thy proud music sound, Thy humble nest build on the ground. COWLEY'S ESSAYS. THE DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. A Letter to Mr. S. L. AM glad that you approve and applaud my design, of withdrawing myself from all tu- mult and business of the world ; and conse- crating the little rest of my time to those studies, to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long detained me. But nevertheless (you say, which, but, is " aerugo mera," ^ a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But you say) you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person, whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man) " cum dignitate otium." This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life, when it is once turned beyond forty. The seeking for a fortune then, is but a desperate after-game : it is a Hor. Sat. i. iv. 1 00. PROCRASTINATION. 113 hundred to one, if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially, if his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some help for all the defects of fortune ; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus (who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, bountiful person) to recommend to him, who had made so many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too ; " but I intreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving persons, but in the most gentle- manly manner of obliging him, which is, not to add any thing to his estate, but to take something from his desires." The sum of this is, that, for the uncertain hopes of some conveniences, we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary ; especially, when the use of those things, which we would stay for, may otherwise be supplied ; but the loss of time, never recovered : nay, farther yet, though we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet, when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, "le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle," the play is not worth the expense of the candle : after having been long tost in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and top-gallants ; utere velis, Totos pande sinus — - 2 Juv. i, 150. I 114 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. A gentleman in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner, and lost his life afterwards, only by staying to put on a band, and adjust his perriwig ; he would escape like a person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. I think, your counsel of " Fes- tina lente" is as ill to a man who is flying from the world, as it would have been to that unfortunate well- bred gentleman, who was so cautious as not to fly un- decently from his enemies ; and therefore I prefer Horace's advice before yours, sapere aude, Incipe — Begin ; the getting out of doors is the greatest part of the journey. Varro"* teaches us that Latin proverb, " portam itineri longissimam esse :" but to return to Horace, " — Sapere aude : Incipe ; Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat, dum labitur amnis : at ille Labitur, et labetur in omue volubilis ajvum.""* Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay, Till the whole stream, which stopt him, should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.^ 3 Lib. i. Agric. " Ep. i. ii. 40. ^ This translation gives the sense, but not the grace, of the original ; here follows Nevile's Imitation. To mend his life who has it in his power, Yet still defers it to a future hour. Waits, like the peasant, till the stream be dried : Still glides the stream, and will for ever glide. Cowley's misquotes in the third, " labitur" for " deflnat" PR CRA S TIXA TION. 1 1 5 Csesar (the man of expedition above all others) was so fiir from this folly, that whensoever, in a journey, he was to cross any river, he never went one foot out of his way for a bridge, or a ford, or. a ferry ; but flung himself into it immediately, and swam over : and this is the course we ought to imitate, if we meet with any stops in our way to happiness. Stay, till the waters are low ; stay, till some boats come by to transport you ; stay, till a bridge be built for you : you had even as good stay, till the river be quite past. Persius (who, you use to say, you do not know whether he be a good poet or no, because you can- not understand him, and whom, therefore, I say, I know to be not a good poet) has an odd expression of these procrastinators, which, methinks, is full of fancy : '•'Jam eras hesternum consumpsimus ; ecce alhxd eras Egerit hos anuos."^ Oar yesterday's to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on ; AVe by to-morrows draw up all our store, 'Till the exhausted well can yield no more. And now, I think, I am even with you, for your " Otium cum dignitate," and " Festina lente," and three or four other more of your new Latin sentences : if I should draw upon you all my forces out of Seneca and Plutarch upon this subject, I should overwhelm you ; but I leave those, as Triarii^' for your next charge. I shall only give you now a light skirmish out of an epi- grammatist, your special good friend ; and so, vale. ^ Pers. Sat. v. 68. "^ i.e. As the last and chief defence. The allusion is to the order of the Roman armies, in which the Triarii, as they were called, served in the rear, and, being their best and most tried soldiers, "were reserved to sustain the action, wlien the other ranks were defeated or hard pressed, and the success became doubtful. ii6 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. MARTIALIS, LIB. \. EPIGR. LIX. jRAS te victurum, eras dicis, Postume, semper ; Die mihi eras istud, Postume, quando venit ? Quam longe eras istud ? ubi est ? aut unde pe- tendum ? Numquid apud Pai'thos, Armenoisque latet ? Jam eras istud liabet Priami vel Nestoris annos. Cras istud quanti, die mihi, possit emi ? Cras vives : hodie jam vivere, Postume, serum est, lUe sapit, quisquis, Postume, vixit heri." To-morrow you will live, you always cry ! In what far country does this morrow lie. That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive ? Beyond the Indies does this morrow live ? 'Tis so far feteh'd this morrow, that I fear 'TwiU be both very old and very dear. To-morrow I will live, the fool does say : To-day itself 's too late ; the wise liv'd yesterday. MAPvTIAL, LIB. II. EPIGR. XC. UINCTILIANE, vagse moderator summe juventEe, Gloria Romance, Quinctiliane, tog^e ; Yivere quod propero pauper, nee inutilis annis ; Da veniam : properat vivere nemo satis. Dilferat hoc, patrios optat qui vineere census, Atriaque immodieis arctat imaginibus. Me focus, et nigros non indignantia fumos PR CRA S TINA TION. 1 1 7 Tecta juvant, et fons vivus, et lierba rudis. Sit mihi verna satur : sit non doctissima conjux : Sit nox cum somno : sit sine lite dies." Wonder not, Sir, (yon who instruct the town In the true wisdom of the sacred gown) That I make haste to live, and cannot hold Patiently out, till I grow rich and old. Life for delays and doubts no time does give, ]S'one ever yet made haste enough to live. Let him defer it, whose preposterous care Omits himself, and reaches to his heir. Who does his father's bounded stores despise, And whom his own too never can suffice : My humble thoughts no glittering roofs require. Or rooms, that shine with aught but constant fire. I well content the avarice of my sight With the fair gildings of reflected light : Pleasures abroad, the sport of nature yields Her living fountains, and her smiling fields ; And then at home, what pleasure is't to see A little cleanly chearful family ! Which if a chaste wife crown, no less in her Than fortune, I the golden mean prefer. Too noble, nor too wise, she should not be, !N'o, nor too rich, too fair, too fond of me. Thus let my life slide silently away, With sleep all night, and quiet all the day. O^X COJFLEY'S ESSAYS. XI. OF MYSELF. \T is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself ;^ it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear any thing of praise from him. Tiiere is no danger from me of offending him in this kind ; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my for- tune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is suffi- cient for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But, besides that, I shall here speak of myself, only in relation to the subject of these precedent dis- courses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation, of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing, what the » This is commonly said, but against all experience, A man of worth and name is never so sure to please, as when he writes of himself with good faith, and without aiFectation. Hence our delight in those parts of Horace's, Boileau's, and Pope's works, in which those eminent writers paint themselves ; and hence the supreme charm of Cowley's Essays, more especially of ihis essav.— Bishop Hurd. OF 3fYSELF. 119 world, or the glories or business of it, were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar ; in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, I wonder at, myself) may appear by the latter end of an ode, which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish ; but of this part, which I here set down (if a very little were corrected), I should hardly now be much ashamed. 9. ^^SHIS only grant me, that my means may lie ^ ^ Too low for envy, for contempt too high. p-t S fffli Some honour I would have. Not from great deeds, but good alone ; The unknown are better, than ill known ; Rumour can ope the grave. Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends Not on the number, but the choice of friends. I20 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. 10. Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night. My house a cottage more Than palace ; and should fitting be For all my use, no luxury. My garden painted o'er With nature's hand, not art's ; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabin field. 11. Thus would I double my life's fading space ; For he, that runs it well, twice runs his race. And in this true delight. These unbought sports, this happy state, I would not fear, nor wish, my fate ; But boldly say each night, To-morrow let my sun his beams display. Or, in clouds hide them ; I have liv'd, to-day. You may see by it, I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace) ; " and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them, which stampt first, or rather engraved, these characters in me : they were like letters cut into the bark of a young tree, which with the tree still grow pro- portionably. But, how this love came to be produced in me so early, is a hard question : I believe, I can tell ■ille potens sui, Lajtusque deget, cui licet in diem Dixisse, Vixi : eras vel atra Nube polum, Pater, occupato, Vel sole puro." — Od. iii. xxix. 41. OF MYSELF. izi the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there : for I remember, when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) but there was wont to lie Spenser's works : this I hap- pened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found every where there (though my understanding had little to do with all this) ; and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers ; so that, I think, I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch. With these afiections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university ; but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storm, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet, I had as good fortune as could have befallen me in such a tempest ; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses, of the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the original design of my life, that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both militant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and French courts) ; yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confir- mation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it ; and that beauty, which I did not fall in love with, when, for aught I knew, it 122 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me, when I saw that it was adulterate. I met with several great persons, whom I liked very well ; but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or de- sired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it : a storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage. Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found any where, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses ; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old school- boy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect : Well then ; ^ I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &.C.. And I never then proposed to myself any other advan- tage from his majesty's happy Restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country ; which I thought, in that case, I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extra- ordinary fortune : but I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself; and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance, of it : |HOU neither great at court, nor in the war. Nor at til' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrang- linij bar. ^ We have these verses under the name of the Wish, in The Mistress." OF MYSELF. 123 Content thyself with the small barren praise, Which neglected verse does raise." She spake ; and all n)y years to come Took their unlucky doom. Their several ways of life let others chuse, Their several pleasures let them use ; But I was born for Love, and for a Muse. 4. With Fate what boots it to contend ? Such I began, such am, and so must end. The star, that did my being frame, Was but a lambent flame. And some small light it did dispense. But neither heat nor influence. No matter, Cowley; let proud Fortune see. That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee. Let all her gifts the portion be Of folly, lust, and flattery, Fraud, extortion, calumny. Murder, infidelity, Bebellion and hypocrisy. Do thou nor grieve nor blush to be, As all th' inspired tuneful men. And all thy great forefathers were, from Homer down to Ben.^ However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it a corps perda^ without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man, who says to his soul. Take thy ease : ■* Pindaric Odes. Destinv. 124 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine : yet I do neither repent, nor alter my course. " Non ego perfidum dixi sacra- mentum;" nothing shall separate me from a mistress, which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her : ' — "Nee vos, dulcissima mundi Nomina, vos Musse, Libertas, Otia, Libri, Hortique Sylvseque, anima remanente, relinquam." Nor by me e'er shall you, You, of all names the sweetest, and the best, You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest ; You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be, As long as life itself forsakes not me. But this is a very pretty ejaculation; because I have concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last. '^ MAETIAL, LIB. X. EPIGR. XLV. jITAM qu£e faciunt beatiorem, Jucundissime Martialis, hasc sunt lies non parta labore, sed relicta ; Non ingratus ager, focus perennis. Lis nunquam ; toga rara ; mens quieta ; OF MYSELF. 125 Vires ingenuse ; salubre corpus ; Prudens simplicitas ; pares amici ; Convictus facilis ; sine arte mensa ; Nox non ebria, sed soluta curis ; Xon tristis torus, et tamen pudicus ; Somnus, qui faciat breves tenebras ; Quod sis, esse velis, nihilque malis : Summum nee metuas diem, nee optes." Since, dearest friend, 'tis your desire to see A true receipt of happiness^ from me ; These are tiie chief ingredients, if not all : Take an estate neither too great nor small. Which quantum sufficit the doctors call. Let this estate from parents' care descend ; The getting it too much of life does spend. Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be A fair encouragement for industry. Let constant fires the winter's fury tame; And let thy kitchen's be a vestal flame. Thee to the town let never suit at law, And rarely, very rarely, business draw. Thy active mind in equal temper keep, In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, Without which all the composition's vain. In the same weight prudence and innocence take, Ana of each does the just mixture make. ^ " The author, I suppose," says Hurd, '' felt his inability to express in our language the concise elegance of the original ; and, therefore, hoped to supply this defect, by what the courtesy of his time was ready to accept, under the name of wit and humour." In no instance has Cowley failed more than in this. Instead of elegance we have clumsiness, instead of compactness, diffuseness. — F. 126 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. But a few friendships wear, and let them be By nature and by fortune fit for thee. Instead of art and luxury in food, Let mirth and freedom make thy table good. If any cares into thy day-time creep, At night, without wine's opium, let them sleep. Let rest, which nature does to darkness wed. And not lust, recommend to thee thy bed. Be satisfied, and pleas'd with what thou art, Act chearfully and well th' allotted part ; Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear, nor wish, th' approaches of the last. MARTIAL, LIB. X. EPIGR. LXXXVIL [^PE loquar nimium gentes quod, avite, remotas, Miraris, Latia factus in urbe senex ; Auriferumque Tagum sitiam, patriiXmque Salo- nem, Et repetam saturse sordida rura cas^. Ilia placet tellus, in qua res parva beatum Me facit, et tenues luxuriantur opes. Paseitur hic ; ibi pascit ager : tepet igne maligno Hic focus, ingenti lumine lucet ibi. LIic pretiosa fames, conturbatdrque macellus, Mensa ibi divitiis ruris operta sui. Quatuor hic testate togse, pluresve teruntur ; Autumnis ibi me quatuor una tegit. I, cole nunc reges : quicquid non praestat amicus, ' Cum prsestare tibi possit, avite, locus." Me, who have liv'd so long among the great, You wonder to hear talk of a retreat : OF 3IYSELF. 127 And a retreat so distant, as may show No thoughts of a return, when once I go. Give me a country, how remote so e'er, Where happiness a mod'rate rate does bear, "Where poverty itself in plenty flows, And all the solid use of riches knows. The ground about the house maintains it there, The house maintains the ground about it here. Here even hunger's dear ; and a full board Devours the vital substance of the lord. The land itself does there the feast bestow. The land itself must here to market go. Three or four suits one winter here does waste. One suit does there three or four winters last. Here every frugal man must oft be cold, And little luke-warm fires are to you sold. There fire's an element, as cheap and free, Almost as any of the other three. Stay you then here, and live among the great, Attend their sports, and at their tables eat. When all the bounties here of men you score,^ The place's bounty there shall give me more. ^ He might have said, of friends, as his original does : — " quidquid uon prsestat amicus." But then the application would have been more pointed and satirical than he wished it to be. He therefore drops the idea of friends, and delicately substitutes men. ,28 COWLEY'S ESSAYS. EPITAPHIUM YIVI AUCTORIS. jIC, viator, sub lare parvulo Couleius hie est conditus, hie jacet Defunctus hiimani laboris Sorte, supervaciiaque vita. Non indecora pauperie nitens, Et non inerti nobilis otio, Vanoque dilectis popello Divitiis animosus hostis. Possis ut ilium dicere mortuum ; En terra jam nunc quantula sufficit ! Exempta sit curis, viator, Terra sit ilia levis, precare. Hie sparge flores, sparge breves rosas, Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus,'' Herbisque odoratis corona Vatis adhue eiuerem calentem." ' The application is the juster and prettiei-, because of the poet's singular passion for gardens and flowers (on which sub- ject he had written a Latin poem in six books) ; and then ac- cording to the poetical creed, — vivo qu£B cura — — eadera sequitur tellure repostum. ViKG. ^n. vi. 564. OF MYSELF. 129 EPITAPH OX THE LIYIXG AUTHOPt. 1. |ERE, stranger, in this humble nest, Here, Cowley sleeps ; here lies, Scap'd ail the toils, that life molest. And its superfluous joys. Here, in no sordid poverty, And no inglorious ease, He braves the world, and can defy Its frowns and flatteries. The little earth, he asks, survey : Is he not dead, indeed ? " Light lye that earth," good stranger, pray " Xor thorn upon it breed ! " 4. With flow'rs, fit emblem of his fame. Compass your poet round ; "With flow'rs of ev'ry fragrant name Be his warm ashes crown'd ! ON THE GOVERNMENT A DISCOURSE, BY WAY OF VISION, CON- CERNING THE GOVERNMENT OF OLIVER CROMWELL.^ |T was the funeral day of the late man who made himself to be called protector. And though I bore but little affection, either to the memory of him, or to the trouble and folly of all public pageantry, yet I was forced, by the importunity of my company, to go along with them, and be a spectator of that solemnity, the expectation of which had been so great, that it was said to have brought some very curious persons (and no doubt sin- gular virtuosos) as far as from the Mount in Cornwall, and from the Orcades. I found there had been much more cost bestowed than either the dead man, or indeed death itself, could deserve. There was a mighty train of black assistants, among which, too, divers princes in the persons of their ambassadors (being infinitely afflic- ted jfor the loss of their brother) were pleased to attend ; the hearse was magnificent, the idol crowned, and (not ' This is the best of our author's prose works. The subject which he had much at heart, raised his genius. There is some- thing very noble, and ahnost poetical, in the plan of this vision; and a warm vein of eloquence runs quite through it. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 131 to mention all other ceremonies which are practised at rojal interments, and therefore bj no means could be omitted here) the vast multitude of spectators made up, as it uses to do, no small part of the spectacle itself. But yet, I know not how, the whole was so managed, that, methought, it somewhat represented the life of him for whom it was made ; much noise, much tumult, much expense, much magnificence, much vain-glorj; briefly a great show ; and yet, after all this, but an ill sight. At last (for it seemed long to me, and, liice his short reign too, very tedious) the whole scene passed by; and I retired back to my chamber, weary, and I think more melancholy than any of the mourners ; where I began to reflect on the whole life of this prodigious man : and sometimes I was filled with horror and detestation of his actions, and sometimes I inclined a little to reverence and admiration of his courage, conduct, and success ; till, by these ditferent motions and agitations of mind, rocked, as it were, asleep, I fell at last into this vision ; or if you please to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, be- cause the father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God. But sure it was no dream ; for I was suddenly trans- ported afar off (whether in the body, or out of the body, like St. Paul,'~ I know not) and found myself on the top of that famous hill in the island Mona, which has the prospect of three great, and not-long-since most happy, kingdoms. As soon as ever I looked on them, the not-loiig- since struck upon my memory, and called forth the sad representation of all the sins, and all the miseries, that had overwhelmed them these twenty years. * Very injudicious, on such an occasion, to use the language of St. Paul, says Bishop Hurd. 132 ON THE G0VERN3IENT And I wept bitterly for two or three hours ; and, when my present stock of moisture was all wasted, I fell a sighing for an hour more ; and, as soon as I recovered from my passion the use of speech and reason, I broke forth, as I remember (looking upon England), into this complaint : 1. ^^^^H, happy isle, how art thou chang'd and curst, i^\ Since I was born, and knew thee first ! Arkryf i "\Ylien peace, which had forsook the world around, (Frighted with noise, and the shrill trumpet's sound) Thee, for a private place of rest, And a secure retirement, chose AVherein to build her halcyon nest ; No wind durst stii' abroad, the air to discompose. 2. When all the riches of the globe beside Flow'd in to thee with every tide : When all, that nature did thy soil deny, The growth was of thy fruitful industry ; When all the proud and dreadful sea And all his tributary streams, A constant tribute paid to thee. When all the liquid world was one extended Thames ; 3. When plenty in each village did appear, And bounty was it's steward there ; When gold walk'd free about in open view. Ere it one conquering party's prisoner grew ; When the religion of our state Had face and substance with her voice, Ere she, by her foolish loves of late. Like echo (once a nymph) turn'd only into noise. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 133 4. When men to men respect and friendship bore, And God with reverence did adore ; When upon earth no kingdom could have shown A happier monarch to us, than our own ; And yet his subjects by him were (Which is a truth will hardly be Receiv'd by any vulgar ear, A secret known to few) made happier ev'n than he. 5. Thou dost a chaos, and confusion now, A Babel, and a Bedlam, grow. And, like a frantic person, thou dost tear The ornaments and cloaths, which thou should'st wear, And cut thy limbs ; and, if we see (Just as thy barbarous Britons did) Thy body with hypocrisy Painted all o'er, thou think'st, thy naked shame is hid. 6. The nations, which envied thee erewhile, Now laugh (too little 'tis to smile) : They laugh, and would have pitied thee (alas !) But that thy faults all pity do surpass. Art thou the country, which didst hate And mock the French inconstancy ? And have we, have we seen of late Less change of habits there, than governments in thee ? 7. Unhappy Isle ! no ship of thine at sea, Was ever tost and torn like thee. Thy naked hulk loose on the waves does beat. The rocks and banks around her ruin threat ; 134 ON THE GOVERNMENT What did thy foolish pilots ail, To lay the compass quite aside ? "Without a law or rule to sail, And rather take the winds, than heavens, to be their guide ? 8. Yet, mighty God, yet, yet, we humbly crave, This floating isle from shipwreck save ; And though, to wash that blood which does it stain, It well deserve to sink into the main ; Yet, for the royal martyr's prayer, (The royal martyr prays, we know) This guilty, perishing vessel spare ; Hear but his soul above, and not his blood below. I think, I should have gone on, but that I was in- terrupted by a strange and terrible apparition ; for there appeared to me (arising out of the earth,^ as I conceived) the figure of a man, taller than a giant, or indeed the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked ; but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed all over, with several figures, after the manner of the antient Britons, painted upon it : and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mis- taken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass ; and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot too, upon his head."* He ^ i. e., from a low and plebeian original. '' The idea of this gigantic figure seems taken from the frontispiece to Hobbes's "Leviathan." OF OLIVER CROMJFELL. 135 held in his right hand a sword, that was yet bloody, and nevertheless the motto of it was. Pax qucBritur hello ; and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remonstrances, &c. Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly, " What art thou ?" And he said, " I am called the north-west principality, his high- ness, the protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto ; for 1 am that angel, to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from this place." And I answered and said, " If it be so. Sir, it seems to me that for al- most these twenty years past, your highness has been absent from your charge : for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion, but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way ; but, instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector, as was his predecessor Richard the Third to the king his nephew ; for he presently slew the com- monwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it : a little less guilty, indeed, in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer.^ Such a pro- ■^ Meaniiic; the Commonwealth. 136 ox THE GOVERNMENT tector we have had, as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk, than this every month's apostate ; such a pro- tector, as man is to his flocks, which he sheers, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know, what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more ? Such a protector — " and as I was proceeding, me- thought, his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company ; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him, for I did not believe that Cromwell, among all his foreign correspondences, had ever held any with angels. How- ever, I was not hardened enough to venture a quarrel with him then ; and therefore (as if I had spoken to the protector himself in AVhitehall) I desired him " that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had un- wittingly spoken any thing to the disparagement of a person, whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know." At which he told me, " that he had no other concern- ment for his late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world ; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalized English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that coun- trey. And pray, countreyman (said he, very kindly and very flatteringly) for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, what can be more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 137 should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most antient and most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth ? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death ; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family ; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament ; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors, when he grew weary of them ; to raise up a new and unheard of mon- ster out of theii' ashes ; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England ; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice ; to serve all parties patiently for awhile, and to command them victoriously at last ; to over-run each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south, and the poverty of the north ; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth ; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two mil- lions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant ; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them ; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory) to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity ; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity ; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world ; which, as it is now too little for his 138 ON THE GOVERNMENT praises, so miglit have been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs ? ""^ By this speech, I began to understand perfectly well what kind of angel his pretended highness was; and having fortified myself privately with a short mental prayer, and with the sign of the cross (not out of any super- stition to the sign, but as a recognition of my baptism in Christ,)' I grew a little bolder, and replied in this man- ner ; " I should not venture to oppose what you are pleased to say in commendation of the late great, and (I confess) extraordinary person, but that I remember Christ forbids us to give assent to any other doctrine but what himself has taught us, even though it should be delivered by an angel ; and if such you be. Sir, it may be you have spoken all this rather to try than to tempt my frailty, for sure I am, that we must renounce or for- get all the laws of the New and Old Testament, and those which are the foundation of both, even the laws of moral and natural honesty, if we approve of the actions of that man whom I suppose you commend by irony. " There would be no end to instance in the particulars of all his wickedness : but to sum up a part of it briefly: What can be more extraordinarily wicked, than for a person, such as yourself qualify him rightly, to endeavour not only to exalt himself above, but to trample upon, all his equals and betters ? to pretend freedom for all men, and under the help of that pretence to make all men his servants ? to take arms against taxes of scarce ^ Mr. Hume has inserted this character of Cromwell, but altered^ as he says, in some, particulars, from the original, in his " History of Great Britain." ' In virtue of Avhich, he was bound to fight against sin, the world, and the devil. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 139 two hundred thousand pounds a year, and to raise them himself to above two millions ? to quarrel for the loss of three or four ears, and strike ofi' three or four hundred heads ? to fight against an imaginary suspicion of I know- not what two thousand guards to be fetched for the king, I know not from whence, and to keep up for himself no less than forty thousand ? to pretend the defence of parlia- ments, and violently to dissolve all even of his own call- ing, and almost choosing ? to undertake the reformation of religion, to rob it even to the very skin, and then to expose it naked to the rage of all sects and heresies ? to set up counsels of rapine, and courts of murder ? to fight against the king under a commission for him ; to take him forcibly out of the hands of those for whom he had conquered him ; to draw him into his net, with protesta- tions and vows of fidelity ; and when he had caught him in it, to butcher him, with as little shame as conscience or humanity, in the open face of the whole world ? to re- ceive a commission for the king and parliament, to mur- der (as I said) the one, and destroy no less impudently the other ? to fight against monarchy when he declared for it, and declare against it when he contrived for it in his own person ? to abuse perfidiously and supplant in- gratefully his own generaP first, and afterwards most of those ofiicers, who, with the loss of their honour, and hazard of their souls, had lifted him up to the top of his un- reasonable ambitions ? to break his faith with all enemies and with all friends equally ? and to make no less fre- quent use of the most solemn perjuries, than the looser sort of people do of customary oaths ? to usurp three kingdoms without any shadow of the least pretensions, and to govern them as unjustly as he got them ? to set ^ Sir T. Fairfax. I40 Oy THE GOVERXMEXT himself up as an idol (which we know, as St. Paul says, in itself is nothing), and make the very streets of London like the valley of Hinnon, by burning the bowels of men as a sacrifice to his molochship ?^ to seek to entail this usurpation upon his posterity, and with it an endless war upon the nation ? and lastly, by the severest judgment of Almighty God, to die hardened, and mad, and unrepentant, with the curses of the pre- sent age, and the detestation of all to succeed ?" Though I had much more to say (for the life of man is so short, that it allows not time enough to speak against a tyrant) ; yet because I had a mind to hear how my strange adversary would behave himself upon this sub- ject, and to give even the devil (as they say) his right, and fair play in a disputation, I stopped here, and ex- pected (not without the frailty of a little fear) that he should have broke into a violent passion in behalf of his favourite : but he on the contrary very calmly, and with the dove-like innocency of a serpent that was not yet warmed enough to sting, thus replied to me : " It is not so much out of my affection to that person whom we discourse of (whose greatness is too solid to be shaken by the breath of any oratory), as for your own sake (honest countreyman,) whom I conceive to err rather by mistake than out of malice, that I shall en- deavour to reform your uncharitable and unjust opinion. And, in the first place, I must needs put you in mind of ^ Cowley only meaus, that some persons suffered the custo- mary death of traitors, under the protector's government. But why then this tragrical outcry on I know not what sacrifice to Moloch.' Cromwell was a tyrant, that is, rooai'voQ, no doubt, but surely not a cruel nor sanguinary tyrant. In this, and some other instances, the author's resentment gets the better of his discretion. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 141 a sentence of the most antient of the heathen divines, that you men are acquainted withal, Oh X oaiov K-afikvoKriv Itt' dvSpdaiv ei'x^TaaoOai' 'Tis wicked with insulting feet to tread Upon the monuments of the dead. And the intention of the reproof there, is no less proper for this subject ; for it is spoken to a person who was proud and insolent against those dead men. to whom he had been humble and obedient whilst they lived." " Your highness may please (said I) to add the verse that follows, as no less proper for this subject : Whom God's just doom and their own sins have sent Akeady to their punishment. " But I take this to be the rule in the case, that, when we fix any infamy upon deceased persons, it should not be done out of hatred to the dead, but out of love and charity to the living : that the curses, which only remain in men's thoughts, and dare not come forth against tyrants (because they are tyrants) whilst they are so, may at least be for ever settled and engraven upon their memories, to deter all others from the like wickedness ; which else, in the time of their foolish prosperity, the flattery of their own hearts and of other men's tongues would not suffer them to perceive. Ambition is so subtle a tempter, and the corruption of human nature so susceptible of the temptation that a man can hardly resist it, be he never so much forewarned of the evil consequences; much less if he find not only the concurrence of the present, but the approbation too of following ages, which have the liberty to judge more freely. The mischief of tyranny is too great, even in the shortest time that it can con- tinue ; it is endless and insupportable, if the example be 142 ON THE GOVERNMENT to reign too, and if a Lambert must be invited to follow the steps of a Cromwell, as well by the voice of honour, as by the sight of power and riches. Though it may seem to some fantastically, yet was it wisely done of the Syracusans, to implead with the forms of their ordinary justice, to condemn and destroy even the statues of all their tyrants : if it were possible to cut them out of all history, and to extinguish their very names, I am of opinion that it ought to be done ; but, since they have left behind them too deep wounds to be ever closed up without a scar, at least let us set such a mark upon their memory, that men of the same wicked inclinations may be no less affrighted with their lasting ignominy, than enticed by their momentary glories. And that your highness may perceive, that I speak not all this out of any private animosity against the person of the late pro- tector, I assure you, upon my faith, that I bear no more hatred to his name, than I do to that of Marius or Sylla, who never did me, or any friend of mine, the least injury; and with that, transported by a holy fury, I fell into this sudden rapture : ~ 1. [URST be the man (what do I wish ? as though The wretch already were not so ; But curst on let him be) who thinks it brave And great, his countrey^" to enslave, Who seeks to overpoise alone The balance of a nation, *" This word, iu the sense of patria, or as including in it the idea of a civil constitution, is always spelt by Mr. Cowley, I observe, with an e before y, — conntrev; — in the sense of nis, without an e — country ; — and this distinction, for the sake of perspicuity, may be worth preserving. — HuRD. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 143 Against the -whole but naked state, Who in his own light scale makes up with arms the weight. "Who of his nation loves to be the first, Though at the rate of being worst. "Who would be rather a great monster,^than A well-proportion'd man. The son of earth with hundred hands Upon his three-pil'd mountain stands. Till thunder strikes him from the skj ; The son of earth again in his earth's womb does lie. 3. "What blood, confusion, ruin, to obtain A short and miserable reign ! In what oblique and humble creeping wise Does the mischievous serpent rise ! But even his forked tongue strikes dead : When he's rear'd up his wicked head. He murders with his mortal frown ; A basilisk he grows, if once he get a crown. But no guards can oppose assaulting fears, Or undermining tears, Xo more than doors or close-drawn curtains keep The swarming dreams out, when we sleep. That bloodv conscience, too, of his (For, oh, a rebel red-coat 'tis) Does here his early hell begin, He sees his slaves without, his tvrant feels within. 144 ^^^ ^^^ GOVERNMENT 5. Let, gracious God, let never more thine hand Lift up this rod against our land. A tyrant is a rod and serpent too, And brings worse plagues than Egypt knew. What rivers stain'd with blood have been ! What storm and hail-shot have we seen ! What sores deform'd the ulcerous state ! What darkness, to be felt, has buried us of late ! 6. How has it snatch'd our flocks and herds away ! And made even of our sons a prey ! What croaking sects and vermin has it sent, The restless nation to torment ! What greedy troops, what armed power Of flies and locusts, to devour The land, which every where they fill ! Nor fly they, Lord, away ; no, they devour it still. 7. Come the eleventh plague, rather than this should be ; Come sink us rather in the sea. Come, rather, pestilence, and reap us down ; ^ Come God's sword rather than our own, Let rather Roman come again. Or Saxon, Xorman, or the Dane : In all the bonds we ever bore. We griev'd, we sigh'd, we wept; we never blush'd before. 8. If by our sins the divine justice be Call'd to this last extremity. Let some denouncing Jonas first be sent, To try, if England can repent. OF OLIVER CROMIVELL. 145 jNIethinks, .at least, some prodinry, Some dreadful comet from on liiirli, Should terribly forewarn the earth, As of good princes' deaths, so of a tyrant's Vnrth." Here, the spirit of verse beginning a little to fail, I stopt : and his highness, smiling, said, " I was glad to see you engaged in the enclosure of metre ; for, if you had staid in the open plain of declaiming against the word Tyrant, I must have had patience for half a dozen hours, till you had tired yourself as well as me. But pray, countreyman, to avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat with words, let me know. Sir, what you mean by the name tyrant, for I remember that, among your antient authors, not only all kings, but even Jupiter himself (your juvans pater) is so termed ; and perhaps, as it was used formerly in a good sense, so we shall find it, upon better consideration, to be still a good thing for the benefit and peace of mankind ; at least, it will appear whether your interpretation of it may be justly applied to the person, who is now the subject of our discourse." "I call him (said I) a tyrant, who either intrudes himself forcibly into the government of his fellow citizens without any legal authority over them; or who, having a just title to the government of a people, abuses it to the destruction, or tormenting, of them. So that all tyrants are at the same time usurpers, either of the whole, or at least of a part, of that power which they assume to themselves : and no less are they to be accounted rebels, since no man can usurp authority over others, but by rebelling against them who had it before^ or at least against those laws which were his superiors : and in all these senses, no history can afford us a more L 146 ON THE GOVERNMENT evident example of tyranny, or more out of all possi- bility of excuse, or palliation, than that of the person •whom you are pleased to defend ; whether we consider his reiterated rebellions against all his superiors, or his usurpation of the supreme power to himself, or his tyranny in the exercise of it : and, if lawful princes have been esteemed tyrants, by not containing them- selves within the bounds of those laws which have been left them, as the sphere of their authority, by their forefathers, what shall we say of that man, who, having by right no power at all in this nation, could not content himself with that which had satisfied the most ambitious of our princes ? nay, not with those vastly extended limits of sovereignty, which he (disdaining all that had been prescribed and observed before) was pleased (out of great modesty) to set to himself; not abstaining from i-ebellion and usurpation even against his own laws, as well as those of the nation ?" " Hold, friend, (said his highness, pulling me by my arm) for I see your zeal is transporting you again ; whether the protector were a tyrant in the exorbitant exercise of his power, we shall see anon ; it is requisite to examine, first, whether he were so in the usurpation of it. And I say, that not only he, but no man else, ever was, or can be so; and that for these reasons. First, because all power belongs only to God, who is the source and fountain of it, as kings are of all honours in their dominions. Princes are but his viceroys in the little provinces of this world ; and to some he gives their places for a few years, to some for their lives, and to others (upon ends or deserts best known to himself, or merely for his un disputable good pleasure) he bestows, as it were, leases upon them, and their posterity, for such a date of time as is prefixed in that patent of their destiny, OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 147 which is not legible to you men below. Neither is it more unlawful lor Oliver to succeed Charles in the kingdom of England, when God so disposes of it, than it had been for him to have succeeded the Lord Strafibni in his lieutenancy of L'eland, if he had been appointed to it by the king then reigning. Men are in both the cases obliged to obey him, whom they see actually in- vested with the authority by that sovereign from whom he ought to derive it, without disputing or examining the causes, either of the removal of the one, or the preferment of the other. Secondly, because all power is attained, either by the election and consent of the people (and that takes away your objection of forcible intrusion) ; or else, by a conquest of them (and that gives such a legal authority as you mention to be want- ing in the usurpation of a tyrant) ; so that either this title is right, and then there are no usurpers, or else it is a wrong one, and then there are none else but usurpers, if you examine the original pretences of the princes of the world. Thirdly, (which, quitting the dispute in general, is a particular justification of his highness) the government of England was totally broken and dis- solved, and extinguished by the confusions of a civil war ; so that his highness could not be accused to have possessed himself violently of the antient building of the commonwealth, but to have prudently and peace- fully built up a new one out of the ruins and ashes of the former ; and he who, after a deplorable shipwreck, can with extraordinary industry gather together the dispersed and broken planks and pieces of it, and with no less wonderful art and felicity so rejoin them as to make a new vessel more tight and beautiful than the old one, deserves, no doubt, to have the command of her (even as his highness had) by the desire of the seamen 148 ON THE G0VERN3IENT and passengers themselves. And do but consider, lastly, (for I omit a multitude of weighty things, that might be spoken upon this noble argument) do but consider seriously and impartially with yourself, what admirable parts of v\nt and prudence, what indefatigable diligence and invincible courage, must, of necessity, have con- curred in the person of that man, who, from so con- temptible beginnings (as I observed before,) and through so many thousand difficulties, was able not only to make himself the greatest and most absolute monarch of this nation ; but to add to it the entire conquest of Ireland and Scotland (which the whole force of the world, joined with the Koman virtue, could never attain to), and to crown all this with illustrious and heroical undertakings and successes upon all our foreign enemies : do but (I say again) consider this, and you will confess, that his prodigious merits were a better title to imperial dignity, than the blood of an hundred royal progenitors ; and will rather lament that he had lived not to overcome more nations, than envy him the conquest and dominion of these." " Whoever you are (said I, my indignation making me somewhat bolder), your discourse (methinks) be- comes as little the person of a tutelar angel, as Crom- well's actions did that of a protector. It is u})on these principles, that all the great crimes of the world have been committed, and most particularly those which I have had the misfortune to see in my own time, and in my own countrey. If these be to be aHowed, we must break up human society, retire into woods, and equally there stnnd upon our guards against our brethren man- kind, and our rebels the wild beasts. For, if there can be no usurpation ujDon the rights of a whole nation, there can be none, most certainly, upon those of a OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 149 private person ; and, if the robbers of countreys be God's vicegerents, there is no doubt but the thieves and banditos, and murderers, are his under officers. It is true, which you say, that God is the source and fountain of all power ; and it is no less true, that he is the creator of serpents, as well as angels ; nor does his goodness fail of its ends, even in the malice of his own creatures. "What power he suffers the devil to exercise in this world, is too apparent by our daily experience ; and by nothing more than the late monstrous iniquities which you dispute for, and patronize in England : but would you infer from thence, that the power of the devil is a just and lawful one ; and that all men ought, as well as most men do, obey him ? God is the fountain of all powers ; but some flow from the right hand (as it were) of his goodness, and others from the left hand of his justice ; and the v/orld, like an island between these two rivers, is sometimes refreshed and nourished by the one, and sometimes over-run and ruined by the other ; and (to continue a little farther the allegory) we are never overwhelmed with the latter, till, either by our malice or negligence, we have stopped and dammed up the former. But to come a little closer to your argument, or rather the image of an argument, your similitude. If Cromwell had come to command in Ireland in the place of the late Lord Strafford, I should have yielded obe- dience, not for the equipage, and the strength, and the guards which he brought with him, but for the commis- sion which he should first have shewed me from our common sovereign that sent him ; and, if he could have done that from God Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England; but that he was so far from being able to do, that, on the contrary, I read nothing but 150 ox THE G0VERN3IENT commands, and even public proclamations, from God Almighty, not to admit him. Your second argument is, that he had the same right for his authority, that is the foundation of all others, even the right of conquest. Are we then so unhappy as to be conquered by the person, whom we hired at a daily rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? did we furnish him with arms, only to draw and try upon our enemies (as we, it seems, falsely thought them), and keep them for ever sheathed in the bowels of his friends? did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might become slaves to our servant ? This is such an impu- dent pretence, as neither he, nor any of his flatterers for him. had ever the face to mention Though it can hardly be spoken or thought of without passion, yet I shall, if you please, argue it more calmly than the case deserves. The right, certainly, of conquest can only be exercised upon those, against whom the war is declared, and the victory obtained. So that no whole nation can be said to be conquered, but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men are so far from stating the quarrel against their countrey, that they do it only against a person, or party, which they really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it ; neither can there be any just cause for the destruction of a part of the body, but when it is done for the preservation and safety of the whole. It is our countrey that raises men in the quarrel, our countrey that arms, our countrey that pays them, our countrey that authorizes the undertaking, and, by that, distinguishes it from rapine and murder ; lastly, it is our countrey that directs and commands the army, and is their general. So that to say, in civil wars, that the prevailing party conquers their countrey, is to say, the OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 151 countrey conquers itself. And, if tlie general only of that party be conqueror, the army by which he is made so is no less conquered than the army which is beaten, and have as little reason to triumph in that victory, by which they lose both their honour and liberty. So that if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that against which he was sent; and what that was, must appear by his commission. It was (says that) against u company of evil counsellors and disaffected persons, who kept the king from a good intelligence and conjunction with his people. It was not then against the people. It is so far from being so, that even of that party which was beaten, the conquest did not belong to Cromwell, but to the parliament which employed him in their ser- vice, or rather, indeed, to the king and parliament, for whose service (if there had been an)' faith in men's vows and protestations) the wars were undertaken. Merciful God ! did the right of this miserable conquest remain, then, in his majesty ; and didst thou suffer him to be destroyed, with more barbarity, than if he had been conquered even by savages and canibals ; was it for king and parliament that we fought ; and has it fared with them just as with the army which we fought against, the one part being slain, and the other fled ? it appears therefore pLiinly, that Cromwell was not a con- queror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the king and parliament, and an usurper upon those of the people. I do not here deny the conquest to be sometimes (though it be very rarely) a true title ; but I deny this to be a true conquest. Sure I am, that the race of our princes came not in by such a one. One nation may conquer another, sometimes, justly ; and if it be unjustly, yet still it is a true conquest, and they are to answer for the injustice only to God Almighty (having nothing else 152 ON THE GOVERNMENT in autliorlty above them,) and not as particular rebels to their countrey, which is, and ought to be, their supe- rior and their lord. If, perhaps, we find usurpation instead of conquest in the original titles of some royal families abroad (as, no doubt, there have been many usurpers before ours, though none in so impudent and execrable a manner :) all I can say for them is, that their title was very weak, till, by length of time, and the death of all juster pretenders, it became to be the true, because it wa,s the only one. Your third defence of his highness (as your highness pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pretence of conquest ; for then a man may say any thing. The government was broken ; who broke it ? It was dissolved ; who dissolved it? It was extinguished ; who was it, but Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but cast away even the very snuff of it ? As if a man should murder a whole family, and then possess himself of the house, because it is better that he, than that only rats, should live there. Jesus God ! (said I, and at that word I perceived my pretended angel to give a start and trembled, but I took no notice of it, and went on) this were a wicked pretension, even though the whole family were destroyed ; but the heirs (blessed be God) are yet surviving, and likely to outlive all heirs of their dispos- sessors, besides their infamy. " Rode, caper, viteni," &c. There will be yet wine enough left for the sacrifice of those wild beasts, that have made so much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell think, like Nero, to set the city on fiie, only that he might have the honour of being founder of a new and more beautiful one? He could not have such a shadow of virtue in his wicked- ness ; he meant only to rob more securely and more richly in midst of the combustion ; he little thought then OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 153 that he should ever have been able to make himself master of the palace, as well as plunder the goods of the commonwealth. He was glad to see the public vessel (the sovereign of the seas) in as desperate a condition as his own little canoe, and thought only, with some scattered planks of that great shipwreck, to make a better fisher-boat for himself. But when he saw that, bj the drowning of the master (whomhe himself treacher- ously knocked on the head, as he was swimming for his life), by the tlight and dispersion of other.s, and cowardly j)atience of the remaining company, that all was aban- doned to his pleasure ; with the old hulk and new mis- shapen and disagreeing pieces of his own, he made up, with much ado, that piratical vessel which we have seen him command, and which, how tight indeed it was, may best be judged by its perpetual leaking. First then (much more wicked than those foolish daughters in the fable, who cut their old father into I)ieces, in hope, by charms and witchcraft, to make him young and lusty again), this man endeavoured to destroy the building, before he could imagine in what manner, with what materials, by what workmen, or what archi- tect, it was to be rebuilt. Secondly, if he had dreamed himself to be able to revive that body which he had killed, yet it had been but the insupportable insolence of an ignorant mountebank ; and, thirdly, (which concerns us nearest,) that very new thing which he made out of the ruins of the old, is no more like the original, either for beauty, use, or duration, than an artificial plant, raised by the fire of a chemist, is comparable to the true and natural one which he first burnt, that out of the ashes of it he might produce an imperfect similitude of his own making. Your last argument is such (when reduced to syllo- 154 ON THE GOVERNMENT gism), that the major proposition of it would make strange work in the world, if it were received for truth: to wit, that he who has the best parts in a nation, has the right of being king over it. We had enough to do here of old with the contention between two branches of the same family : what would become of us, when every man in England should lay his claim to the govern- ment ? And truly, if Cromwell should have commenced his plea, when he seems to have begun his ambition, there were few persons besides, that might not at the same time have put in theirs too. But his deserts, I suppose, you will date from the same term that I do his great demerits, that is, from the beginning of our late calamities (for, as for his private faults before, I can only wish, and that with as much charity to him as to the public, that he had continued in them till his death, rather than changed them for those of his latter days) ; and, therefore, we must begin the consideration of his greatness from the unlucky sera of our own misfortunes, which puts me in mind of what was said less truly of Pompey the Great, " Nostra miseria magnus es." But, because the general ground of your argumentation con- sists in this, that all men who are the eifecters of extra- ordinary mutations in the world, must needs have extraordinary forces of nature by which they are enabled to turn about, as they please, so great a wheel ; I shall speak, first, a few words upon this universal proposition, which seems so reasonable, and is so popular, before I descend to the particular examination of the eminences of that person which is in question. I have often observed (with all submission and resig- nation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence), that, when the fulness and maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 155 in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of then), that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine justice and predestination ; and, though we see a man, like that which we call Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be convinced, that his hand is moved by some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so vio- lent, that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it ; and none are so weak, but they may sail down with [it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs, which we see often happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes : — Omnia fluminis^' Ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo Cum pace delabentis Etruscum In mare, nunc lapides adesos, Stirpesque raptas, & pecus, & domos Yolventis una, non sine montium Clamors, vicinteque sylvfe ; Cum fera diluvies quietos Irritat amnes. Hor. 3, Curm. xxix. And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be so) ; but it is God that breaks up the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then, and industry of mankind, is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In such a time, it was, as this, that not all the wisdom and power of the Roman senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of Brutus, was " Cowlev iTiSerts ' omnia'' for the ^ccEttra' of Horace. 156 ON THE GOVERNMENT able to defend their countrey, or themselves, against the unexperienced rashness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous madman. ^"^ The valour, and prudent counsels, on the one side, are made fruitless, and the errors, and cowardice, on the other, harmless, by unex- pected accidents. The one general saves his life, and gains the whole world, by a very dream ; and the other loses both at once, by a little mistake of the shortness of his sight.^^ And though this be not always so, for we see that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief instruments, and actors, in so admirable a work (the end of this being, not only to destroy or punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to exalt and bless another, Avhich is only to be effected by great and virtuous persons); yet, when God only intends the tem- porary chastisement of a people, he does not raise up his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to call him), or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to do harm) ; but he makes the Masaniellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the instruments of his ven- geance, that the power of the Almighty might be more evident by the Aveakness of the means which he chooses to demonstrate it. Pie did not assemble the serpents, and the monsters of Afric, to correct the pride of the Egyptians ; but called for his armies of locusts out of '^ Octavins and Antony. ^^ It was owing to a dream of his physician, that Octavius saved his life (by quitting his tent, where he was sick, in a critical moment), and assisted at the battle of Philippi, -which gained him the whole world. Cassius's death, and the ill-success at Philippi, was owing to a mistake which this geueral fell into, by the shortness of his sight. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. i^j Ethiopia, and formed new ones of vermin out of the verj dust ; and, because you see a whole country de- stroyed by these, will you argue from thence they must needs have had both the craft of foxes, and the courage of lions ? It is easy to apply this general oljservatlon to the ])articular case of our troubles in England : and that they seem only to be meant for a temporary chastise- ment of our sins, and not for a total abolishment of the old, and introduction of a new government, aj)pears probable to me from these considerations, as far as we may be bold to make a judgment of the will of God in future events. First, because he has suffered nolhing to settle, or take root, in the place of that which hath been so unwisely and unjustly removed, that none of these untempered mortars can hold out against the next blast of wind, nor any stone stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have refused be made again the head of the corner. For, when the indisposed and long-tormented commonwealth has wearied and spent itself almost to nothing, with the chargeable, various, and dangerous experiments of several mountebanks, it is to be supposed, it will have the wit at last to send for a true physician, especially when it sees (which is the second consideration) most evidently (as it now begins to do, and will do every day more and more, and might have done perfectly long since) that no usurpation (under what name or pretext soever) can be kept up without open force, nor force without the continuance of those oppressions upon the people, which will, at last, tire out their patience, though it be great even to stupidity. They cannot be so dull (when poverty and hunger begin to whet their understanding) as not to find out this no extraordinary mystery, that it is mad- 158 ON THE G0VERX3IEXT ness in a nation to pay three millions a year for the maintaining of their servitude under tyrants, when they might live free for nothing under their princes. This, I say, will not always lie hid, even to the slowest capacities ; and the next truth they will discover after- wards is, that a whole people can never have the will, without having, at the same time, the power to redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not look (methinks) as if God had forsaken the family of that man, from whom he has raised up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all other commendable qualities, as ever lived perhaps (for so many together, and so young) in any other family in the whole world. Especially, if we add hereto this con- sideration, that, by protecting and preserving some of them already through as great dangers as ever were past with safety, either by prince or private person, he has given them already (as we may reasonably hope it to be meant) a promise and earnest of his future favours. And, lastly, (to return closely to the discourse from wiiich I have a little digressed) because I see nothing of those excellent parts of nature, and mixture of merit with their vices, in the late disturbers of our peace and happiness, that uses to be found in the persons of those who are born for the erection of new empires. And, I confess, I find nothing of that kind, no not any shadow (taking away the false light of some pros- perity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it. And, certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of the former, than by men's actions ; or of the latter, than by their writings, or speeches. As for these latter (which are least in merit, or, rather, which are only the instruments of mischief, where the other are wanting,) I think you can hardly pick out the name OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 159 of a man who ever was called great, besides him we are now speaking of, who never left the memory behind him of one wise or witty apophthegm even amongst his domestic servants or greatest flatterers. That littlje in print, which remains upon a sad record for him, is such, as a satire against him would not have made him say, for fear of transgressing too much the rules of pro- bability. I know not what you can produce for the justification of his parts in this kind, but his having been able to deceive so many particular persons, and so many whole parties ; Avhich, if you please to take notice of for the advantage of his intellectuals, I desire you to allow me the liberty to do so too when I am to speak of his morals. The truth of the thing is this, that if craft be wisdom, and dissimulation wit (assisted both and im- proved with hypocrisies and perjuries), I must not deny him to have been singular in both ; but so gross was the manner in which he made use of them, that, as wise men ought not to have believed him at first, so no man was fool enough to believe him at last : neither did any man seem to do it, but those who thought they gained as much by that dissembling, as he did by his. His very actings of godliness grew at last as ridiculous, as if a player, by putting on a gown, should think he represented excel- lently a woman, though his beard, at the same time, were seen by all the spectators. If you ask me, why they did not hiss, and explode him off the stage ; I can only answer, that they durst not do so, because the actors and the door-keepers were too strong for the company. I must confess that by these arts (how grossly soever managed, as by hypocritical praying and silly preaching, by unmanly tears and whinings, by tahe- hoods and perjuries even diabolical) he had at first the good-fortune (as men call it, that is, the ill-fortune) to i6o OX THE GOVERNMENT attain liIs er.ds ; but it was because bis ends were so un- reasonable, that no human reason could foresee them ; which made them, who had to do with him, believe, that he was rather a well-meaning and deluded bigot, than a crafty and malicious impostor : that these arts were helped by an indefatigable industry (as you term it), I am so far from doubting, that I intended to object that diligence, as the worst of his crimes. It makes me almost mad, when I hear a man commended for his diligence in wickedness. If I were his son, I should wish to God he had been a more lazy person, and that we might have found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us ; Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood, Isai. lix. 7. He ti-avels icith iniquity, Psal. vii. 14. He deviseth mischief upon his bed, Psal. xxxiv. 4. They search out iniquity, they accomplish a diligent seaj'ch, Psal. Ixiv. 6 ; and in a multitude of other places. And would it not seem ridiculous to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his inde- fatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilst the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too, are all asleep ? The Chartreux wants the warning of a bell To call him to the duties of his cell; There needs no noise at all t'awaken sin, Th' adulterer and the thief his 'larum has within. And, if the diligence of Avicked persons be so much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and ex- aggeration of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can avoid the same censure. If the under- OF OLIVER CROMWELL. i6i taking bold and vast and unreasonable designs can de- serve that honourable name, I am sure, Faux, and his fellow gun-powder friends, Avill have cause to pretend, though not an equal, yet at least the next place of honour ; neither can I doubt but, if they too had suc- ceeded, they would have found their applauders and admirers. It was bold, unquestionably, for a man, in defiance of all human and divine laws, (and with so little probability of a long impunity,) so publicly and so out- rageously to murder his master ; it was bold, with so much insolence and aifront, to expel, and disperse, all the chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power ; it was bold, to violate, so openly and so scorn- fully, all acts and constitutions of a nation, and after- wards even of his own making ; it was bold, to assume the authority of calling, and bolder yet of breaking, so many parliaments ; it was bold, to trample upon the patience of his own, and provoke that of all neighbour- ing countries ; it was bold, I say, above all boldnesses, to usurp this tyranny to himself; and impudent above all impudences, to endeavour to transmit it to his pos- terity. But all this boldness is so far from being a sign of manly courage (which dares not transgress the rules of any other virtue,) that it is only a demonstration of brutish madness or diabolical possession. In both which last cases there use frequent examples to appear, of such extraordinary force as may justly seem more wonderful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell; neither is it stranger to believe that a whole nation should not be able to govern him and a mad army, than that five or six men should not be strong enough to bind a distracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wickedness, but it gives him the boldness to attempt a greater. It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother, and uU the M i62 ON THE GOVERNMENT chief nobility of the empire ; it was boldly done, to set the metropolis of the whole world on fire, and un- dauntedly play upon his harp, whilst he saw it burning; I could reckon up five hundred boldnesses of that great person, (for why should not he, too, be called so ?) who wanted, when he was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed any woman in the like necessity. It would look (I must confess,) like envy, or too much partiality, if I should say that personal kind of courage had been deficient in the man we speak of; I am confident it was not : and yet I may venture, I think, to aflirm, that no man ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the rate of fewer wounds, or dangers of his own body ; and though his valour might, perhaps, have given him a just pretension to one of the first charges in an army, it could not certainly be a sufficient ground for a title to the command of three nations. What then shall we say ? that he did all this by witchcraft ? He did so, indeed, in a great measure, by a sin that is called like it in the Scriptures. But, truly and unpassionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person, which might be thought to have produced those of his fortune, I can espy no other but extra- ordinary diligence, and infinite dissimulation ; and be- lieve he was exalted above his nation, partly by his own faults, but chiefly for ours. We have brought him thus briefly (not through all his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped authority ; and, because you say it was great pity he did not live to command more kingdoms, be pleased to let me represent to you, in a few words, how well I conceive he governed these. And we will divide the consideration into that of his foreign and domestic actions. The first of his foreign was a peace with our brethren of Holland (who OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 163 were the first of our neighbours that God chastised for having had so great a hand in the encouraging and abetting our troubles at home) : who would not imagine, at first glimpse, that this had been the most virtuous and laudable deed, that his whole life could have made any parade of? but no man can look upon all the cir- cumstances, without perceiving, that it was purely the sale and sacrificing of the greatest advantages that this countrey could ever hope, and was ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private interests of his covetous- ness and ambition, and the security of his new and un- settled usurpation. Xo sooner is that danger past, but this Beatus Pacificus is kindling a fire in the northern world, and carrying a war two thousand miles off, west- wards. Two millions a year (besides all the vales of his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice now either his avarice or prodigality, as the two hundred pounds were, that he was born to. He must have his prey of the whole Indies, both by sea and land, this great alligator. To satisfy our Anti- Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalem) we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus, as well as Sylla, of our nation, whom God never forsook in any of his un- dertakings), I desire them to consider, how, since the English name was ever heard of, it never received so great and so infamous a blow as under the imprudent conduct of this unlucky Faustus ; and, herein, let me admire the justice of God, in this circumstance, that they, who had enslaved their countrey, (though a great army, which I wish, may be observed by ours with trembling), should be so shamefully defeated, by the i64 ON THE GOVERNMENT hands of forty slaves. It Avas very ridiculous to see bow prettily tliey endeavoured to hide this ignominy, under the great name of the conqiiest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should have the impudence to brag afterwards of the victory, because, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet they quartered that night in a village of the enemies. The war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly ; and how much we have gotten by it, let the custom-house and exchange inform you ; and, if he please to boast of the taking a part of the silver fleet, (which, indeed, nobody else but he who was the sole gainer, has cause to do), at least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which is the only loser), to complain of the loss of twelve hundred of her ships. But, because it may here, perhaps, be answered, that his successes nearer home have extinguished the dis- grace of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more to be remembered for his glory, than St. Domingo for his disadvantage ; I must confess, as to the honour of the English courage, that they were not wanting upon that occasion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly against their master), to the upholding of the renown of their war-like ancestors. But, for his particular share of it, who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly abroad, I can only say, that, for less money than he in the short time of his reign exacted from his fellow-subjects, some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their own persons) have added to the dominion of England, not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself. And, this being all considerable as concerning his enterprizes abroad, let us examine, in the next place, how much we owe him for his justice and good government at home. OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 165 And, first, he found the commonwealth (as they then called it) in a ready stock of about 800,000 pounds ; he left the commonwealth (as he hud the impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and a half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed indeed, in coin- parison of the golden times of our late princes ; he left it, as much again more decayed than he found it : and yet, not only no prince in England, but no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infamous means to raise monies. I shall only instance in one that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy of it. That which he put in practice, was decimation ; '"* which was the most impudent breach of all public faith that the whole nation had given, and all private capitu- lations which himself had made, as the nation's general and servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history, from any of the most barbarous generals of the most barbarous people. "Which, because it has been most excellently, and most largely, laid open by a whole book ^^ written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look upon that author, when you would recollect all the particulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The '■* Decimation here means not the putting to death of every terith man,h\xt the levying of the tenth petitjy on the estates of the royalists. I find the word so used by bir J. Denham, among whose poems there is one entitled, '"On ray lord Croft's, and my journey into Poland, from whence we brought 10,000/, for his majesty, by the dtcimation of his Scottish subjects there." But see Lord Clarendon's History, vol. iii. p. 443, fol. '^ This book is probably the same which was written by the king's command at Cologne, and most probably by Sir Edward Hyde. Hist, of the Eebellion, vol. iii. p. 445, fol. 1 66 OJV THE G0VERN3IENT other design, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the calling in and establishment of the Jews at London ; from which he was rebuted by the universal outcry of the divines, and even of the citizens too, who took it ill, that a considerable number, at least amongst themselves, were not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for this design, they say, he invented (O Antichrist! Tiovr^pov and 6 TlovriooQl) to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could have reached to the purchase. And this, indeed, if he had done only to reward that nation, which had given the first noble example of crucifying their king, it' might have had some appearance of gratitude : but he did it only for love of their mammon ; and would have sold afterwards, for as much more, St. Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God, that he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that heathenish way of the Common-prayer-book. But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for getting money ; when every penny, that for almost five years he took every day from every man living in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery, as if it had been taken by a thief upon the highways ? Was it not so ? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assistance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to the command of all men's purses, than he might have had to any one's, whom he had met, and been too strong for, upon a road ? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr. Coney,^^ to be disputed by a legal trial, he J^ Which the reader may see in Lord Clarendon's History, vol. iii. p. 506j fol. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 167 (which was the highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned the counsel of the plaintiff; that is, he shut up the law itself close prisoner, that no man might have relief from, or access to it. And it ought to be remembered, that this was done by those men, who, a few years before, had so bitterly decried, and openly opposed, the king's regular and formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money. But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of justice, it cannot be denied that he set up new ones ; and such they were ! that, as no virtuous prince before would, so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many hundred years under such a form of justice as has been able regularly to punish all men that offended against it ; and is it so deficient, just now, that we must seek out new ways how to proceed against offenders? The reason which can only be given in nature for a necessity of this, is, because those things are now made crimes, which were never esteemed so in former ages ; and there must needs be a new court set up to punish that, which all the old ones were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses, (which, if I should under- take to do, I should never get to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross. Let any man shew me, (for, though I pretend not to much reading, I will defy him in all history), let any man shew me (I say) an example of any nation in the world, (though much greater than ours), where there have, in the space of four years, been made so many prisoners, only out of the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination. I grant you, that Marius 1 68 ON THE GOVERNMENT and Sylla, and the accursed triumvirate after them, put more people to death ; but the reason, I think, partly was, because in those times, that had a mixture of some honour with their madness, they thought it a more civil revenge against a Eoman, to take away his life, than to take away his liberty. But truly, in the point of murder too we have little reason to think that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples tliat have ever been set it, in other countries. Our judges and our courts of justice have not been idle : and, to omit the whole reign of our late king (till the' be- ginning of the war), in which no drop of blood was ever drawn but from two or three ears, I think the longest time of our worst princes scarce saw many more execu- tions, than the short one of our blest reformer. And we saw, and smelt in our open streets, (as I marked to you at first), the broiling of human bowels as a burnt-offer- ing of a sweet savour to our idol ; but all murdering, and all torturing (though after the subtilest invention of his predecessors of Sicily), is more humane and more sup- portable, than his selling of Christians, Englishmen, gentlemen; his selling of them (oh monstrous! oh in- credible!) to be slaves in America. If his whole life could be reproached with no other action, yet this alone would weigh down all the multiplicity of crimes in any of our tyrants; and I dare only touch, without stopping or insisting upon so insolent and so execrable a cruelty, for fear of falling into so violent (though a just) passion, as would make me exceed that temper and moderation, which I resolve to observe in this discourse with you. These are great calamities ; but even these are not the most insupportable that we have endured ; for so it is, that the scorn, and mockery, and insultings of an enemy, are more painful than the deepest wounds of his serious OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 169 fury. This man was wanton and merry (unwlttily and un- gracefully merry) with our sufferings : he loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to shew his power of doing or saying any thing. It would ill befit mine, or any civil mouth, to repeat those words which he spoke con- cerning the most sacred of our English laws, the Petition of Right, and Magna Charta.'' To-day, you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst come near him ; the morrow, flinging of cushions, and playing at snow-balls, with his servants. This month, he assembles a parlia- ment, and professes himself, with humble tears, to be only their servant and their minister ; the next month, he swears by the living God, that he will turn them out of doors, and he does so, in his princely way of threatening, bidding them, " Turn the buckles of their girdles be- hind them." The representative of whole, nay of three whole nations, was, in his esteem, so contemptible a meeting, that he thought the affronting and expelling of them to be a thing of so little consequence, as not to deserve that he should advise with any mortal man about it. What shall we call this ? boldness, or brutish- ness ? rashness, or phrensy ? There is no name can come up to it; and therefore we must leave it without one. Xow, a parliament must be chosen in the new manner, next time in the old form, but all cashiered still after the newest mode. !Nowhe will govern by major-generals, now by one house, now by another house, now by no house ; now the freak takes him, and he makes seventy peers of the land at one clap (extempore^ and stems pede in uno); and, to manifest the absolute power of the potter, he chooses not only the worst clay he could find, but picks up even the dirt and mire, to form out of it his vessels of honour. ^^ In the case of Coney before mentioned. 1 70 ON THE GOVERNMENT It was said antiently of Fortune, that, when she had a mind to be merry, and to divert herself, she was wont to raise up such kind of people to the highest dignities. This son of Fortune, Cromwell (who was himself one of the primest of her jests), found out the true haut-gout of this pleasure, and rejoiced in the extravagance of his ways, as the fullest demonstration of his uncontroulable sovereignty. Good God ! AVhat have we seen ? and what have we suffered ? what do all these actions sig- nify ? what do they say aloud to the whole nation, but this, (even as plainly as if it were proclaimed by heralds through the streets of London), " You are slaves and fools, and so I will use you !" These are, briefly, a part of those merits which you lament to have wanted the reward of more kingdoms, and suppose that, if he had lived longer, he might have had them : which I am so far from concurring to, that I believe his seasonable dying to have been a greater good-fortune to him, than all the victories and prosperi- ties of his life. For he seemed evidently (methinks) to be near the end of his deceitful glories ; his own army grew at last as weary of him, as the rest of the people ; and I never passed of late before his palace (his, do I call it ? I ask God and the king pardon), but I never passed of late before Whitehall, without reading upon the gate of it, Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin}^ But it pleased God to take him from the ordinary courts of men, and juries of his peers, to his own high court of justice ; which being more merciful than ours below, there is a little room yet left for the hope of his friends, if he have any ; though the outward unrepent- ance of his death, afford but small materials for the work 18 Dan. V. 25. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 171 of charity, especially If he designed even then to entail his own injustice upon his children, and, by it, inextri- cable confusions and civil wars upon the nation. But here's at last an end of him. And where's now the fruit of all that blood and calamity, which his ambition has cost the world ? Where is it ? Why, his son (you will say) has the whole crop ; I doubt, he will find it quickly blasted ; I have nothing to say against the gen- tleman,^^ or any living of his family ; on the contrary, I wish him better fortune, than to have a long and unrpiiet possession of his master's inheritance. Whatsoever I have spoken against his father, Is that which I should have thought (though decency, perhaps, might have hindered me from saying it) even against mine own. If I had been so unhappy, as that mine, by the same ways, should have left me three kingdoms. Here I stopt ; and my pretended protector, who, I ex- pected, should have been very angry, fell a laughing ; It seems at the simplicity of my discourse, for thus he re- plied : " You seem to pretend extremely to the old obsolete rules of virtue and conscience, which makes me doubt very much, whether, from this vast prospect of three kingdoms, you can shew me any acres of your own. But these are so far from making you a prince, that I am afraid your friends will never have the con- tentment to see you so much as a justice of peace In your own country. For this, I perceive, which you call virtue, is nothing else but either the frowardness of a Cynic, or the laziness of an Epicurean. I am glad you allow me at least artful dissimulation, and unwearied diligence in my hero ; and I assure you, '^ A remarkable testimony to the blameless character of Richard Cromwell. 172 ON THE GOVERNMENT that he, whose life is c^onstantly drawn by those two, shall never be misled out of the way of greatness. But I see you are a pedant, and Platonical statesman, a theoretical commonwealth's-man, an Utopian dreamer. Was ever riches gotten by your golden mediocrities ? or the supreme place attained to by virtues that must not stir out of the middle ? Do you study Aristotle's politics, and write, if you please, comments upon them; and let another but practise Machiavel: and let us see, then, which of you two will come to the greatest preferments. If the desire of rule and superiority be a virtue, (as sure I am it is more imprinted in human nature than any of your lethargical morals ;) and what is the virtue of any creature, but the exercise of those powers and inclina- tions which God has infused into it ? if that (I say) be virtue, we ought not to esteem any thing vice, which is the most proper, if not the only, means of attaining of it : IT is a truth so certain, and so clear. That to the first-born man it did appear ; Did not the mighty heir, the noble Cain, By the fresh laws of nature taught^ disdain That (though a brother) any one should be A greater favourite to God than he ? He strook him down ; and, so (said he) so fell The sheep, which thou didst sacrifice so well. Since all the fullest sheaves, which I could bring, Since all were blasted in the offering. Lest God should my next victim too despise, The acceptable priest I'll sacrifice. Hence, coward fears ; for the first blood so spilt. As a reward, he the first city built. 'Twas a beginning generous and high, Fit for a grand-child of the Deity. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 173 So well advanc'd, 'twas pity there he staid ; One step of glory more he should have made, And to the utmost bounds of greatness gone; Had Adam too been kill'd, he might have reign'd alone. One brother's death, what do I mean to name, A small oblation to revenge and fame ? The mighty-soul'd Abimelec, to shew What for a high place a higher spirit can do, A hecatomb almost of brethren slew, And seventy times in nearest blood he dy'd (To make it hold) his royal purple pride. Why do I name the lordly creature man ? The weak, the mild, the coward woman, can, When to a crown she cuts her sacred way, All that oppose, with manlike courage, slay. So Athaliah, when she saw her son, And with his life her dearer greatness gone, AVith a majestic fury slaughter'd all Whom high birth might to high pretences call : Since he was dead who all her power sustain'd, Eesolv'd to reign alone ; resolv'd, and reign'd. In vain her sex, in vain the laws withstood, In vain the sacred plea of David's blood ; A noble, and a bold contention, she (One woman) undertook with destiny. She to pluck down, destiny to uphold (Oblig'd by holy oracles of old) The great Jesseean race on Juda's throne ; Till 'twas at last an equal wager grown, Scarce fate, with much ado, the better got by one. Tell me not, she herself at last was slain ; Did she not, first, seven years (a life-time) reign ? Seven royal years t'a public spirit will seem More than the private life of a Methusalem. 174 ON THE GOVERNMENT 'Tis godlike to be great ; and, as they say, A thousand years to God are but a day ; So to a man, when once a crown he wears, The coronation day's more than a thousand years." He would have gone on, I perceived, in his blasphe- mies, but that, by God's grace, I became so bold, as thus to interrupt him : " I understand now perfectly (which I guest at long before) what kind of angel and protector you are ; and, though your style in verse be very much mended^" since you were wont to deliver oracles, yet your doctrine is much worse than ever you had formerly (that I heard of) the face to publish ; whether your long practice with mankind has increased and improved your malice, or whether you think us in this age to be grown so impudently Avicked, that there needs no more art or disguises to draw us to your party." " j\Iy dominion (said he hastily, and with a dreadful furious look) is so great in this world, and I am so powerful a monarch of it, that I need not be ashamed that you should know me ; and that you may see I know you too, I know you to be an obstinate and inveterate malignant ; and for that reason I shall take you alorg with me to the next garrison of ours ; from whence you shall go to the Tower, and from thence to the court of justice, and from thence you know whither." I was almost in the very pounces of the great bird of prey : 2° This compliment was intended, not so much to the foregoing as to the following verses, of which the author had reason to be proud ; but, as being delivered in his own person, could not so properly make the panegyric. OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 175 [HEX, lo, ere the last words were fullj spoke, W From a fair cloud, which rather op'd than broke, A flash of light, rather than lightening, came, So swift, and yet so gentle, was the flame. Upon it rode, (and, in his full career, Seera'd to my eyes no sooner there, than here,) The comeliest youth of all th'angelic race ; Lovely his shape, ineffable his face. The frowns, with which he strook the trembling fiend, All smiles of human beauty did transcend ; His beams of locks fell part dishevel'd down. Part upwards curl'd, and form'd a nat'ral crown, Such as the British monarchs us'd to wear ; If gold might be compar'd with angel's hair. His coat and flowing mantle were so bright, They seem'd both made of woven silver light : Across his breast an azure riband went,"^^ At which a medal hung, that did present In wondrous living figures to the sight. The mystic champion's, and old dragon's fight ; And from his mantle's side there shone alar, A fix'd, and, I believe, a real star. In his fair hand (what need was there of more ?) No arms, but th'English bloody cross, he bore, "Which when he tow'rds th'afli'ighted tyrant bent. And some few words pronounc'd (but what they meant. '' We must reflect that the tutelar genius of England is here introduced, not merely to unravel the intricacy of the scene, but to form a striking contrast to the foal Jiend who had usurped his place ; and still further to disgrace the usurper by a portrait of the rightful heir to the British crown, presented to us under an angelic form, and in all the force and beauty of poetic colouring. 176 GOVERNMENT OF CROMWELL. Or were, could not, alas, by me be known, Only, I well perceiv'd, Jesus was one) He trembled, and he roar'd, and fled away; j\lad to quit thus his more than hop'd-for prey. Such rage inflames the wolf's wild heart and eyes (Robb'd, as he thinks, unjustly of his prize) 'Whom unawares the shepherd spies, and draws The bleating lamb from out his ravenous jaws : The shepherd fain himself would he assail, But fear above his hunger does prevail, He knows his foe too strong, and must be gone : He grins, as he looks back, and howls, as he goes on. THE AUTHOE'S PEEFACE TO CUTTER OF COLEMAX STEEET. COMEDY, called The Guardian, and made by me when I was very young, was acted formerly at Cambridge ; and several times after, privately, during the troubles, as I am told, with good approbation, as it has been lately too at Dublin. There being many things in it which I dis- liked, and finding myself for some days idle, and alone in the country, I fell upon the changing of it almost wholly, as now it is, and as it was played since at his Royal Highness's theatre, under this new name. It met at the first representation with no favourable reception ; and I think there was something of faction against it, by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their judgment. Afterwards it got some ground, and found friends, as well as adversaries. In which condition I should willingly let it die, if the main impu- tation under which it sufi^ered had been shot only against my wit or art in these matters, and not directed against the tenderest parts of human reputation, good- nature, good-manners, and piety itself. 1 78 PREFACE TO The first clamour, which some malicious persons raised, and made a great noise with, was, that it was a piece intended for abuse and satire against the King's party. Good God! against the King's party? After having served it twenty years, during all the time of their misfortunes and afflictions, I must be a very rash and imprudent person, if I chose out that of their resti- tution to begin a quarrel with them. I must be too much a madman to be trusted with such an edged tool as comedy. But first, why should either the whole party (as it was once distinguished by that name, which I hope is abolished now by universal loyalty), or any man of virtue or honour in it, believe themselves injured, or at all concerned, by the representation of the faults and follies of a few, who, in the general division of the nation, had crouded in among them ? In all mixed numbers (which is the case of parties), nay, in the most entire and continued bodies, there are often some de- generated and corrupted parts, which may be cast away from that, and even cut off from this unity, without any infection of scandal to the remaining body. The church of Rome, with all her arrogance, and her wide pretences of certainty in all truths, and exemption from all errors, does not clap on this enchanted armour of infallibility upon all her particular subjects, nor is offended at the reproof of her greatest doctors. We are not, I hope, become such Puritans ourselves, as to assume the name of the congregation of the spotless. It is hard for any party to be so ill as that no good, impossible to be so good as that no ill, should be found among them. And it has been the perpetual privilege of satire and comedy, to pluck their vices and follies, though not their persons, out of the sanctuary of any title. A cowardly ranting soldier, an ignorant charlatanical doctor, a foolish cheat- CUTTER OF COLEMAN STREET. 179 ing lawyer, a silly pedantical scholar, have always been, and still are, the principal subjects of all comedies, without any scandal given to those honourable profes- sions, or even taken by their severest professors. And, if any good physician or divine should be offended with me here, for inveighing against a quack, or for finding Deacon Soaker too often in the butteries, my respect and reverence to their callings would make me troubled at their displeasure, but I could not abstain from taking them for very choleric and quarrelsome persons. What does this therefore amount to, if it were true which is objected ? But it is far from being so ; for the represen- tation of two sharks about the town (fellows merry and ingenious enough, and therefore admitted into better companies than they deserve, yet withal two very scoun- drels, which is no unfrequent character at London), the representation, I say, of these as pretended officers of the Royal army, was made for no other purpose but to show the world, that the vices and extravagances im- puted vulgarly to the cavaliers, were really committed by aliens, who only usurped that name, and endeavoured to cover the reproach of their indigency, or infamy of their actions, with so honourable a title. So that the business was not here to correct or cut off any natural branches, though never so corrupted or luxuriant, but to separate and cast away that vermin, which, by stick- ing so close to them, had done great and considerable prejudice both to the beauty and fertility of the tree ; and this is plainly said, and as often inculcated, as if one should write round about a sign, This is a dog, This is a dog, out of over-much caution lest some might happen to mistake it for a lion. Therefore, when this calumny could not hold (for the case is clear, and will take no colour,) some others i8o PREFACE TO sought out a subtler hint, to traduce me upon the same score ; and were angry, that the person whom I made a true gentleman, and one both of considerable quality and sufferings in the royal party, should not have a fair and noble character throughout, but should submit, in his great extremities, to wrong his niece for his own relief. This is a refined exception, such as I little fore- saw, nor should, with the dulness of my usual charity, have found out against another man in twenty years. The truth is, I did not intend the character of a hero, one of exemplary virtue, and, as Homer often terms such men, unblameable, but an ordinary jovial gentleman, commonly called a good-fellow, one not so conscientious as to starve rather than do the least injury, and yet en- dowed with so much sense of honour, as to refuse, when that necessity was removed, the gain of five thousand pounds, which he might have taken from his niece by the rigour of a forfeiture : and let the frankness of this latter generosity so expiate for the former frailty, as may make us not ashamed of his company ; for, if his true metal is but equal to his allay, it will not indeed render him one of the finest sort of men, but it will make him current, for aught I know, in any party that ever yet was in the world. If you be to chuse parts for a comedy out of any noble or elevated rank of persons, the most proper for that work are the worst of that kind. Comedy is humble of her nature, and has always been bred low, so that she knows not how to behave herself with the great and accomplished. She does not pretend to the brisk and bold qualities of wine, but to the stomachal acidity of vinegar ; and therefore is best placed among that sort of people which the Romans call The lees of Romulus. If I had designed here the cele- bration of the virtues of our friends, I would have made CUTTER OF COLEMAN STREET. i8i the scene nobler where I intended to erect their statues. They should have stood in odes and tragedies, and epic poems (neither have I totally omitted those great testi- monies of my esteem of them) — " Sed nunc non erat his locus," &c. And so much for this little spiny objection, which a man cannot see without a magnifying-glass. The next is enough to knock a man down, and accuses me of no less than profaneness. Profane, to deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it ? But there is some imitation of Scripture-phrases : God for- bid ! there is no representation of the true face of Scripture, but only of that vizard which these hypocrites (that is, by interpretation, actors with a vizard) draw upon it. Is it profane to speak of Harrison's return to life again, when some of his friends really professed their belief of it, and he himself had been said to promise it ? A man may be so imprudently scrupulous as to find profaneness in any thing, either said or written, by apply- ing it under some similitude or other to some expres- sions in Scripture. This nicety is both vain and end- less. But I call God to witness, that, rather than one tittle should remain among all my writings, which, ac- cording to my severest judgment, should be found guilty of the crime objected, I would myself burn and extinguish them all together. Nothing is so detestably lewd and wretchless as the derision of things sacred ; and would be in me more unpardonable than any man else, who have endeavoured to root out the ordinary weeds of poetry, and to plant it almost wholly with divinity. I am so far from allowing any loose or ir- reverent expressions, in matters of that religion which I believe, that I am very tender in this point, even for the 1 82 PREFACE TO grossest errors of conscientious persons ; they are the properest object (metbinks) both of our pity and charity too : they are the innocent and white sectaries, in com- parison of another kind, who engraft pride upon ig- norance, tyranny upon liberty, and upon all their heresies, treason and rebellion. These are principles so destructive to the peace and society of mankind, that they deserve to be pursued by our serious hatred ; and the putting a mask of sanctity upon such devils, is so ridiculous, that it ought to be exposed to contempt and laughter. They are indeed profane, who counterfeit the softness of the voice of holiness, to disguise the roughness of the hands of impiety ; and not they, who, with reverence to the thing which others dissemble, de- ride nothing but their dissimulation. If some piece of an admirable artist should be ill copied, even to ridi- culousness, by an ignorant hand ; and another painter should undertake to draw that copy, and make it yet more ridiculous, to shew apparently the difference of the two works, and deformity of the latter ; will not every man see plainly, that the abuse is intended to the foolish imitation, and not to the excellent original ? I might say much more, to confute and confound this very false and malicious accusation ; but this is enough, I hope, to clear the matter, and is, I am afraid, too much for a preface to a work of so little considera- tion. As for all other objections, which have been or may be made against the invention or elocution, or any thing else which comes under the critical jurisdiction ; let it stand or fall as it can answer for itself, for I do not lay the great stress of my reputation upon a structure of this nature, much less upon the slight reparations only of an old and unfashionable building. There is no writer CUTTER OF COLEMAN STREET. 183 but may fail sometimes in point of wit ; and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of judgment. I perceive plainly, by daily experience, that Fortune is mistress of the theatre, as TuUy says it is of all popular assemblies. Xo man can tell sometimes from whence the invisible winds rise that move them. There are a multitude of people, who are truly and only spectators at a play, without any use of their understanding ; and these carry it sometimes by the strength of their num- bers. There are others, who use their understandings too much ; who think it a sign of weakness and stupidity, to let any thing pass by them unattacked, and that the honour of their judgments (as some brutals imagine of their courage) consists in quarrelling with every thing. AVe are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it, we, who spend our time in poetry : I do sometimes laugh, and am often angry with myself, when I think on it ; and if I had a son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it, by the strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more ridiculous, than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on their part, more earnestly to take offence ? To expose one's self voluntarily and frankly to all the dangers of that narrow passage to un- profitable fame, which is defended by rude multitudes of the ignorant, and by armed troops of the malicious ? If we do ill, many discover it, and all despise us ; if we do well, but few men find it out, and fewer entertain it kindly. If we commit errors, there is no pardon ; if we could do wonders, there would be but little thanks, and that, too, extorted from unwilling givers. But some perhaps may say, Was it not always thus ? do you expect a particular privilege, that was never yet enjoyed by any poet ? were the ancient Grecian or noble 1 84 PREFACE, ETC. Roman authors, was Virgil liimself, exempt from this possibility : Qui melior multis, quam tu, fuit, improbe, rebus ; who was, in many things, thy better far, thou impudent pretender ? as was said by Lucretius to a person, who took it ill that he was to die, though he had seen so many do it before him, who better deserved immortality ; and this is to repine at the natural condition of a living poet, as he did at that of a living mortal. I do not only acknowledge the pre-eminence of Virgil (whose footsteps I adore), but submit to many of his Roman brethren ; and I confess, that even they, in their own times, were not so secure from the assaults of detraction (though Horace brags at last. Jam dente minus mordeor invido ;) but then the barkings of a few were drowned in the applause of all the rest of the world, and the poison of their bitings extinguished by the antidote of great rewards and great encouragements, which is a way of curing now out of use ; and I really profess, that I neither expect, nor think I deserve it. Indolency would serve my turn instead of pleasure : but the case is not so well ; for, though I comfort myself with some assurance of the favour and affection of very many candid and good-natured (and yet too, judicious and even critical) persons ; yet this I do affirm, that from all which I have written I never received the least benefit, or the least advantage, but, on the contrary, have felt sometimes the effects of malice and misfortune. A PROPOSITION FOR THE ADVANTEMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. The College. I HAT the philosophical college be situated within one, two, or (at farthest) three miles of London ; and, if it be possible to find that convenience, upon the side of the river, or very near it. That the revenue of this coUege amount to four thou- sand pounds a year. That the company received into it be as follows : 1. Twenty philosophers or professors. 2. Sixteen young scholar?, servants to the professors. 3. A chap- lain. 4. A bailiff for the revenue. 5. A manciple or purveyor for the provisions of the house. 6. Two gar- deners. 7. A mastercook. 8. An under-cook. 9. A butler. 10. An under-butler. IL A surgeon. 12. Two lungs, or chemical servants. 13. A library-keeper, who is likewise to be apothecary, druggist, and keeper of instruments, engines, &c. 14. An officer, to feed and take care of all beasts, fowl, &c. kept by the college. 15. A groom of the stable. 16. A messenger, to send up and down for all uses of the college. 17. Four old 1 86 THE ADVANCEMENT OF women, to tend the chambers, keep the house clean, and such like services. That the annual allowance for this company be as follows : 1. To every professor, and to the chaplain, one hundred and twenty pounds. 2. To the sixteen scholars twenty pounds apiece, ten pounds for their diet, and ten pounds for their entertainment. 3. To the bailiff, thirty pounds, besides allowance for his journies. 4. To the purveyor, or manciple, thirty pounds. 5. To each of the gardeners, twenty pounds. G. To the mas- ter-cook, twenty pounds. 7. To the under-cook, four pounds. 8. To the butler, ten pounds. 9. To the under-butler, four pounds. 10. To the surgeon, thirty pounds. 11. To the library-keeper, thirty pounds. 12. To each of the lungs, twelve pounds. 13. To the keeper of the beasts, six pounds. 14. To the groom, five pounds. 15. To the messenger, twelve pounds. 16. To the four necessary women, ten pounds. For the manciples' table at which all the servants of the house are to eat, except the scholars, one hundred and sixty pounds. For three horses for the service of the college, thirty pounds. All which amounts to three thousand two hundred eighty-five pounds. So that there remains, for keeping of the house and gardens, and operatories, and instru- ments, and animals, and experiments of all sorts, and all other expenses, seven hundred and fifteen pounds. Which were a very inconsiderable sum for the great uses to which it is designed, but that I conceive the industry of the college will, in a short time, so enrich itself, as to get a far better stock for the advance and enlargement of the work when it is once begun : neither is the continuance of particular men's liberality to be despaired of, when it shall be encouraged by the sight of EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 187 that public benefit which will accrue to all mankind, and chiefly to our nation, by this foundation. Some- thing likewise will arise from leases and other casualties: that nothing of which may be diverted to the private gain of the professors, or any other use besides that of the search of nature, and by it the general good of the world, and that care may be taken for the certain per- formance of all things ordained by the institution, as likewise for the protection and encouragement of the company, it is proposed : That some person of eminent quality, a lover of solid learning, and no stranger in it, be chosen chancellor or president of the college ; and that eight governors more, men qualified in the like manner, be joined with him, two of which shall yearly be appointed visitors of the college, and receive an exact account of all expenses even to the smallest, and of the true estate of their public treasure, under the hands and oaths of the pro- fessors resident. That the choice of professors in any vacancy belong to the chancellor and the governors ; but that the pro- fessors (who are likeliest to know what men of the nation are most proper for the duties of their society) direct their choice, by recommending two or three persons to them at every election : and that, if any learned person within his majesty's dominions discover, or eminently improve, any useful kind of knowledge, he may upon that ground, for his reward and the encouragement of others, be preferred, if he pretend to the place, before any body else. That the governors have power to turn out any pro- fessor, who shall be proved to be either scandalous or unprofitable to the society. That the college be built after this, or some such i?8 THE ADVANCEMENT OF manner: That It consist of three fair quadrangular courts, and three large grounds, inclosed with good walls behind them. That the first court be built with a fair cloister : and the professors' lodgings, or rather little houses, four on each side, at some distance from one another, and with little gardens behind them, just after the manner of the Chartreux beyond sea. That the in- side of the cloister be lined with a gravel-walk, and that walk with a row of trees ; and that in the middle there be a parterre of flowers, and a fountain. That the second quadrangle, just behind the first, be so contrived, as to contain these parts. 1. A chapel. 2. A hall, with two long tables on each side, for the scholars and officers of the house to eat at, and with a pulpit and forms at the end for the public lectures. 3. A large and pleasant dining-room within the hall, for the pro- fessors to eat in, and to hold their assemblies and con- ferences. 4. A public school-house. 5. A library. 6. A gallery to walk in, adorned with the pictures or statues of all the inventors of any thing useful to human life; as, printing, guns, America, &c. and of late in anatomy, the circulation of the blood, the milky veins, and such like discoveries in any art, with short eulogies under the portraitures : as likewise the figures of all sorts of crea- tures, and the stuft skins of as many strange animals as can be gotten. 7. An an atomy -chamber, adorned with skeletons and anatomical pictures, and prepared with all conveniences for dissection. 8. A chamber for all manner of drugs, and apothecaries' materials. 9. A ma- thematical chamber, furnished with all sorts of mathe- matical instruments, being an appendix to the library. 10. Lodgings for the chaplain, surgeon, library-keeper, and purveyor, near the chapel, anatomy-chamber, library, and hall. 1^ EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 189 W That the third court be on one side of these, very large, but meanly built, being designed only for use, and not for beauty, too, as the others. That it contain the kitchen, butteries, brew-house, bake-house, dairy, lardry, stables, &c. and especially great laboratories for chemical operations, and lodgings for the under- servants. That behind the second court be placed the garden, containing all sorts of plants that our soil will bear ; and at the end a little house of pleasure, a lodge for the gardener, and a grove of trees cut out into walks. That the second inclosed ground be a garden, des- tined only to the trial of all manner of experiments concerning plants, as their melioration, acceleration, retardation, conservation, composition, transmutation, coloration, or whatsoever else can be produced by art either for use or curiosity, with a lodge in it for the gardener. That the third ground be employed in convenient re- ceptacles for all sorts of creatures which the professors shall judge necessary, for their more exact search into the nature of animals, and the improvement of their uses to us. That there be likewise built, in some place of the college where it may serve most for ornament of the whole, a very high tower for observation of celestial bodies, adorned with all sorts of dials and such like k curiosities ; and that there be very deep vaults made under ground, for experiments most proper to such places, which will be, undoubtedly, very many. Much might be added ; but truly I am afraid this is itoo much already for the charity or generosity of this age to extend to ; and we do not design this after the model of Solomon's house in my Lord Bacon (which is 190 THE ADVANCEMENT OF a project for experiments that can never be experi- mented), but propose it within such bounds of expense as have often been exceeded by the buildings of private citizens. Of the Professors, Scholars, Chaplain, and other officers. That of the twenty professors, four be always travelling beyond the seas, and sixteen always resident, unless by permission upon extraordinary occasions ; and every one so absent, leaving a deputy behind him to supply his duties. That the four professors itinerant be assigned to the four parts of the world, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Ame- rica, there to reside three years at least ; and to give a constant account of all things that belong to the learning, and especially natural experimental philosophy, of those parts. That the expense of all dispatches, and all books, simples, animals, stones, metals, minerals, &c. and all cui'iosities Avhatsoever, natural or artificial, sent by them to the college, shall be defrayed out of the trea- sury, and an additional allowance (above the £120.) made to them as soon as the college's revenue shall be improved. That, at their going abroad, they shall take a solemn oath, never to write any thing to the college, but what, after very diligent examination, they shall fully believe to be true, and to confess and recant it as soon as they find themselves in an error. That the sixteen professors resident shall be bound to study and teach all sorts of natural experimental philosophy, to consist of the mathematics, mechanics, EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 191 medicine, anatomy, chemistry, the history of animals, plants, minerals, elements, &c. ; aj^riculture, architec- ture, art military, navigation, gardening ; the mysteries of all trades, and improvement of them ; the fucture of all merchandizes, all natural magic or divination ; and briefly ail things contained in the catalogue of natural histories annexed to my Lord Bacon's Organon. That once a day from Easter till ^Michaelmas, and twice a week from Michaelmas to Easter, at the hours in the afternoon most convenient for auditors from Lon- don, according to the time of the year, there shall be a lecture read in the hall, upon such parts of natural ex- perimental philosophy, as the professors shall agree on among themselves, and as each of them shall be able to perform usefully and honourably. That two of the professors, by daily, weekly, or monthly turns, shall teach the public schools, according to the rules hereafter prescribed. That all the professors shall be equal in all respects (except precedency, choice of lodging, and such like privileges, which shall belong to seniority in the col- lege) ; and that all shall be masters and treasurers by annual turns, which two ofiicers for the time being shall take place of all the rest, and shall be arhitri duarum mensarum. That the master shall command all the officers of the college, appoint assemblies or conferences upon occasion, and preside in them with a double voice; and in his ab- sence, the treasurer, whose business is to receive and disburse all monies by the master's order in writing (if it be an extraordinary), after consent of the other pro- fessors. That all the professors shall sup together in the par- lour within the hall every night, and shall dine there 192 THE ADVANCEMENT OF twice a week (to wit, Sundays and Thursdays) at two round tables, for the convenience of discourse, which shall be, for the most part, of such matters as may im- prove their studies and professions ; and to keep them from falling into loose or unprofitable talk, shall be the duty of the tv/o arhitri ?nensurimi, who may likewise com- mand any of the servant-scholars to read to them what they shall think fit, whilst they are at table: that it shall belong, likewise, to the said arbitt^i memarum only, to in- vite strangers; which they shall rarely do, unless they be men of learning or great parts, and shall not invite above two at a time to one table, nothing being more vain and unfruitful than numerous meetings of acquaintance. That the professors resident shall allow the college twenty pounds a year for their diet, whether they con- tinue there all the time or not. That they shall have once a week an assembly, or con- ference, concerning the aifairs of the college and the progress of their experimental philosophy. That, if any one find out anything which he conceives to be of consequence, he shall communicate it to the as- sembly, to be examined, experimented, approved, or re- jected. That, if any one be author of an invention, that may bring in profit, the third part of it shall belong to the in- ventor, and the two other to the society ; and besides, if the thing be very considerable, his statue or picture, with an eulogy under it, shall be placed in the gallery, and made a denizen of that corporation of famous men. That all the professors shall be always assigned to some particular inquisition (besides the ordinary course of their studies), of which they shall give an account to the assembly ; so that by this means there may be every day some operation or other made in all the arts, as che- EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 193 mistry, anatomy, mechanics, and the like ; and that the college shall furnish for the charge of the operation. That there shall be kept a register under lock and key, and not to be seen but by the professors, of all the ex- periments that succeed, signed by the persons who made the trial. That the popular and received errors in experimental philosophy (with which, like weeds in a neglected gar- den, it is now almost all over-grown) shall be evinced by trial, and taken notice of in the public lectures, that they may no longer abuse the credulous, and beget new ones by consequence or similitude. That every third year (after the full settlement of the foundation) the college shall give an account in print, in proper and ancient Latin, of the fruits of their triennial industry. That every professor resident shall have his scholar' to wait upon him in his chamber and at table ; whom he shall be obliged to breed up in natural philosophy, and render an account of his progress to the assembly, from whose election he received him, and therefore is respon- sible to it, both for the care of his education and the just and civil usage of him. That the scholar shall understand Latin very well, and be moderately initiated in the Greek, before he be cap- able of being chosen into the service ; and that he shall not remain in it above seven years. That his lodging shall be with the professor whom he serves. That no professor shall be a married man, or a divine, or lawyer in practice ; only physic he may be allowed to prescribe, because the study of that art is a great part of the duty of his place, and the duty of that is so great, o 194 THE ADVANCEMENT OF that it will not suffer liim to lose much time in merce- nary practice. That the professors shall, in the college, wear the habit of ordinary masters of art in the universities, or of doctors, if any of them be so. That they shall all keep an inviolable and exemplary friendship with one another ; and that the assembly shall lay a considerable pecuniary mulct upon any one who shall be proved to have entered so far into a quarrel as to give uncivil language to his brother-professor ; and that the perseverance in any enmity shall be punished by the governors with expulsion. That the chaplain shall eat at the master's table (pay- ing his twenty pounds a year as the others do); and that he shall read prayers once a day at least, a little before supper-time ; that he shall preach in the chapel every Sunday morning, and catechize in the afternoon the scholars and the school-boys; that he shall every month administer the holy sacrament ; that he shall not trouble himself and his auditors with the controversies of divinity, but only teach God in his just command- ments, and in his wonderful works. The School. That the school may be built so as to contain about two hundred boys. That it be divided into four clashes, not as others are ordinarily into six or seven; because we suppose that the children sent hither, to be initiated in things as well as words, ought to have past the two or three first, and to have attained the age of about thirteen years, being already well advanced in the Latin grammar, and some authors. I EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 195 That none, though never so rich, shall pay any thing for their teaching; and that, if any professor shall be convicted to have taken any money in consideration of his pains in the school, he shall be expelled with igno- miny by the governors ; but if any persons of great estate and quality, finding their sons much better pro- ficients in learning here, than boys of the same aire commonly are at other schools, shall not think fit to receive an obligation of so near concernment without returning some marks of acknowledgment, they may, if they please, (for nothing is to be demanded) bestow some little rarity or curiosity upon the society, in recom- pense of their trouble. And because it is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, em- ploying, or rather casting away, six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that too very imper- fectly : — That a method be here established, for the infusing knowledge and language at the same time into them; and that this may be their apprenticeship in natural phi- losophy. This, we conceive, may be done, by breeding them up in authors, or pieces of authors, who treat of some parts of nature, and who may be understood with as much ease and pleasure, as those which are commonly taught ; such are, in Latin, Varro, Cato, Columella, Pliny, part of Celsus and of Seneca, Cicero de Divina- tione, de Xatura Deorum, and several scattered pieces, Virgil's Georgics, Grotius, Nemesianus, Manilius: And because the truth is, we want good poets (I mean we have but few), who have purposely treated of solid and learned, that is, natural matters (the most part indulg- ing to the weakness of the world, and feeding it either with the follies of love, or with the fables of gods and 196 THE ADVANCE3IENT OF heroes), we conceive that one book ought to be compiled of all the scattered little parcels among the ancient poets that might serve for the advancement of natural science and which would make no small or unuseful or un- pleasant volume. To this we would have added the morals and rhetorics of Cicero, and the institutions of Quinctilian; and for the comedians, from whom almost all that necessary part of common discourse, and all the most intimate proprieties of the language, are drawn, we conceive, the boys may be made masters of them, as a part of their recreation, and not of their task, if once a month, or at least once in two, they act one of Terence's Comedies, and afterwards (the most advanced) some of Plautus's ; and this is for many reasons one of the best exercises they can be enjoined, and most innocent plea- sures they can be allowed. As for the Greek authors, they may study Nicander, Oppianus (whom Scaliger does not doubt to prefer above Homer himself, and place next to his adored Virgil), Aristotle's history of animals and other parts, Theophrastus and Dioscorides of plants, and a collection made out of several both poets and other Grecian writers. For the morals and rhetoric, Aristotle may suffice, or Hermogenes and Longinus be added for the latter. With the history of animals they should be shewed anatomy as a divertisement, and made to know the figures and natures of those creatures which are not common among us, disabusing them at the same time of those errors which are universally ad- mitted concerning many. The same method should be used to make them acquainted with all plants ; and to this must be added a little of the ancient and modern geography, the understanding of the globes, and the principles of geometry and astronomy. They should likewise use to declaim in Latin and English, as the EXPERUIEyTAL PHILOSOPHY. 197 Romans did m Greek and Latin ; and in all this travel be rather led on by familiarity, encouragement, and emulation, than driven by severity, punishment, and terror. Upon festivals and play-times, they should ex- ercise themselves in the fields, by riding, leaping, fencing, mustering, and training after the manner of soldiers, &c. And, to prevent all dangers and all disorder, there should always be two of the scholars with them, to be as wit- nesses and directors of their actions ; in foul weather, it would not be amiss for them to learn to dance, that is, to learn just so much (for all beyond is supertiuous, if not worse) as may give them a graceful comportment of their bodies. Upon Sundays, and all days of devotion, they are to be a part of the chaplain's province. That, for all these ends, the college so order it, as that there may be some convenient and pleasant houses thereabouts, kept by religious, discreet, and careful per- sons, for the lodging and boarding of young scholars ; that they have a constant eye over them, to see that they be bred up there piously, cleanly, and plentifully, according to the proportion of the parents' expenses. And that the college, when it shall please God, either by their own industry and success, or by the benevo- lence of patrons, to enrich them so far, as that it may come to their turn and duty to be charitable to others, shall, at their own charges, erect and maintain some house or houses for the entertainment of such poor men's sons, whose good natural parts may promise either use or ornament to the commonwealth, during the time of their abode at school ; and shall take care that it shall be done with the same conveniences as are enjoyed even by rich men's children (though they maintain the fewer for that cause), there being nothing of eminent and 198 THE ADVANCEMENT OF illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, and hos- pital-like education. Conclusion. If I be not much abused by a natural fondness to my own conceptions (that aropyi] of the Greeks, which no other language has a proper word for), there was never any project thought upon, which deserves to meet with so few adversaries as this ; for who can, without impu- dent folly, oppose the establishment of twenty well- selected persons in such a condition of life, that their whole business and sole profession may be to study the improvement and advantage of all other professions, from that of the highest general even to the lowest artisan ? who shall be obliged to employ their whole time, wit, learning, and industry, to these four, the most useful that can be imagined, and to no other ends ; first, to weigh, examine, and prove all things of nature deli- vered to us by former ages ; to detect, explode, and strike a censure through all false monies with which the world has been paid and cheated so long ; and (as I may say) to set the mark of the college upon all true coins, that they may pass hereafter without any farther trial : secondly, to recover the lost inventions, and, as it were, drowned lands of the ancients : thirdly, to improve all arts which we now have ; and lastly, to discover others which we yet have not : and who shall besides all this (as a benefit by the bye), give the best education in the world (purely gratis) to as many men's children as shall think fit to make use of the obligation ? Neither does it at all check or interfere with any parties in state or religion ; but is indifferently to be embraced by all differences in opinion, and can hardly be conceived I EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 199 capable (as manj good institutions have done) even of degeneration into any thing harmful. So that, all things considered, I will suppose this proposition shall en- counter with no enemies : the only question is, whether it will find friends enough to carry it on from discourse and design to reality and effect ; the necessary expenses of the beginning (for it will maintain itself well enough afterwards) being so great (though I have set them as low as is possible in order to so vast a work), tliat it may seem hopeless to raise such a sum out of those few dead relicks of human charity and public generosity which are yet remaining in the world. THE END. 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